Providence Provides

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

The little Roman Catholic school in New England was not even a minor-league basketball power. With only 2,100 students, Providence College played in a high school gymnasium against equally obscure teams, rarely rated a line outside the local papers. Then a touring Notre Dame squad made the mistake of paying a courtesy call, and was upset 85 to 83 on a 44-ft. shot at the buzzer. That was nine years ago, and since then nothing has been quite the same in Providence.

As of last week, Coach Joe Mullaney's Providence Friars had won 197 games and lost only 56 in ten years. They have won two National Invitation Tournament championships (1961 and 1963), supplied the pros with such players as New York's Johnny Egan, St. Louis' Len Wilkens and Boston's John Thompson. But as they moved into this season, the odds were that their record would dwindle. Only one starter was still around from last year's squad that won 20 games and went to the N.C.A.A. playoffs. None of the preseason polls picked Providence to finish among the nation's top ten teams--or even among the top 20.

Yet last week the Friars were ranked No. 4--and even that seemed like an insult. With all five starters scoring in double figures, they spotted Duquesne a 12-point lead in the first half, roared back to win their 18th straight game 83 to 75--thereby remaining the only unbeaten major college team in the U.S.

Accidents Will Happen. To hear Coach Mullaney tell it, the whole thing is an accident. A onetime Holy Cross star ("I used to feed Bob Cousy"), he long ago gave up hope of competing for big-name high school players: "We hope to find diamonds in the rough," he says. One day he was chatting amiably with the mother of a freshman named Billy Blair, when Mrs. Blair blurted out: "Billy's a fine player, but have you ever heard of Jim Walker?" Then, in Laurinburg, N.C., a prep school principal assured Mullaney: "Walker is a fine boy. Since he and Dexter Westbrook arrived, our team has had a 49-1 record."

Last year Walker and Westbrook led Providence's freshman team to its first unbeaten season in seven years. This year they are the most precocious pair of sophomores in college ball. Walker, a 6-ft. 3-in. guard, is the team's top scorer at 20.7 points a game; Westbrook, a 6-ft. 7-in. center, averages eleven rebounds per game, is the key man in the Friars' pro-type pivot offense. And Junior Blair, whose mother started the whole thing, is no less a whiz: he is averaging 14.2 points a game, and against Iowa (which later knocked off national champion U.C.L.A.) he calmly tossed in two free throws with 17 sec. left to give Providence a 71-70 victory.

Right Combination. Defense is really Mullaney's brand of basketball. He developed the "combination," one of the most complicated defenses in modern basketball. Mullaney calls it "a man-to-man defense with zone principles." The Friars start out playing in a normal man-to-man fashion, but when rival players drive toward the basket, the shorter front men trade them off to the taller deep men--instead of following them in. The idea basically is to nullify a size disadvantage by forcing the other team to shoot from the outside, where height is relatively valueless. "We aren't a big team," says Mullaney, "so we have to try different things"--and lately he has been alternating his combination with a zone press, in which the Providence defenders pounce on the attackers as soon as they reach midcourt, trying to force wild throws that can be intercepted.

"Every team we play is loose. They know that all they have to do is beat us to get their names in the papers," Mullaney says, and he is so exhausted by tension that he has trouble staying awake. His boys do not seem to be worried at all. In the locker room before a game, they lounge around listening to rock 'n' roll on Billy Blair's tape recorder. Finally Mullaney stands up, snaps off the recorder. "Let's go," he says. "We've got some work to do."

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