SN Archive: Remembering Rick Pitino’s first Final Four at Providence (April 13, 1987, issue)

SN Archive: Remembering Rick Pitino’s first Final Four at Providence (April 13, 1987, issue) originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

This article, ‘Waking up echoes at Providence’ by Bill Reynolds, originally appeared in the April 13, 1987 issue of The Sporting News. 

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PROVIDENCE, R.I.—He arrived here two years ago making more promises than a door-to-door salesman. He came armed with a reputation as a gung-ho recruiter who once had postponed his honeymoon to go on a recruiting mission.

And, from the beginning, he promised to wake up the echoes of Providence College’s great basketball tradition.

“When you go to sleep tonight, I don’t want you to think about your Visa or Mastercard,” he told the school’s booster club the first time he addressed it. “I don’t want you to think about your troubles. I want you to go to sleep and dream about cutting down the nets.”

Who was this guy?

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At the time it was as if Rick Pitino was just another obsessed coach with a pocketful of mumbles that are promises, some basketball version of Elmer Gantry, an evangelist with a clipboard. Go to sleep and dream about cutting down the nets? With a program that had been 11-65 in the Big East Conference since the league’s inception?

Who was he kidding?

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But on March 21 in the NCAA Southeast Regional in Louisville, Ky., Pitino was cutting down the nets. The Friars had just beaten Georgetown to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1973. That such a dream became a reality so quickly is difficult to believe, especially when you consider that the Friars were 38 games below .500 (96-134) in the previous eight seasons.

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“People say this is a Cinderella story,” Pitino said. “But it goes beyond that, because Cinderella didn’t work this hard.”

The Friars’ advance to the Final Four in the second season after the 34-year-old…

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Publish date : 2026-03-26 13:47:00

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