Welcome

Howdy,

I would like to welcome you all to The Providence Crier! This blog is dedicated to providing you all with my hard hitting opinions and analysis of men’s college basketball. The blog will focus on the Providence College Friars but will also cover other topics in college hoops.  You are probably all asking yourselves why the name? Why The Providence Crier? We can will get to that in a moment but first I should all introduce you to me. 

For those of you who don’t know my name is Mike Surette and I graduated from Providence College in 2012. During my time at PC I actually worked with the men’s basketball team helping out at all their practices, their annual summer basketball camp and also helped with some of the promotional events at the games. I worked for the team during the entire Keno Davis Era (if you want to call it that) and then my senior year in a much more limited capacity with the Ed Cooley staff. Ever since I stepped foot (or walker) on the PC campus my freshman year I have bled the Friar Black and White. Through only 9 years of Friar fandom I have experienced plenty of the Good (2014 Big East title, 2016 buzzer beater to beat USC), the Bad (the 12-19 2009-10 campaign, Keno’s departure) and the Ugly (when I got kicked out of MSG AFTER winning said 2014 Big East title). Also worth noting I am a little guy, they list me at 4 feet tall. Although Im short I’m told I have a big mouth and always use it to loudly voice my opinions on sports. Anyways on to why its called The Providence Crier.

When I asked Siri the definition of what a Crier is she gave me two definitions. 1. Noun- a person who weeps 2. Noun- (formerly) an official who made public announcements. You are all probably thinking to yourselves “ok its a blog about PC hoops so its the second definition”. Unfortunately for me you all would be wrong.  Fresh off a thrilling championship in the Big East Tournament in 2014 the Friars had made the dance for the first time since 2001. Earning the an 11 seed in the NCAA tourney they were pitted against 5 seed UNC Tar Heels. We had a big viewing party at my apartment in Allston at the time, it was a bunch of Friars and a keg what could go wrong! While little PC came close to defeating mighty UNC we ultimately fell. I had a few adult beverages that evening and was seen by a friend (a Umass grad) later in the night drunkenly crying myself to sleep on the couch. THEY PLAYED SO HARD THAT GAME AND CAME SO CLOSE TO AN HISTORIC UPSET! As said in the film The Big Lebowski “strong men also cry Lebowski, strong men also cry” but I digress. Thus the moniker The Providence Crier  was assigned to me.

So there you have it! There will be more to come and I hope you all enjoy yourselves reading The Providence Crier.

-Surette

(me with Big East Championship trophy… pretty chill)