Rag finally responds to PC fans’ angst

At long last, Providence College basketball fans got something approximating what they have wanted for a long time. Both Kevin McNamara and Jim Donaldson wrote frankly about the shortcomings of head coach Tim Welsh in The Providence Journal.

Kevin McNamara centered his preview of Providence’s game at Pitt on Tuesday night around an interview with Providence athletics director Bob Driscoll, a long-time supporter of his maligned coach. While Driscoll was certainly not going to go as far as saying that Welsh was in trouble or that he was at risk of being fired before the season’s conclusions, the AD is clearly disappointed in his 13-10, 4-7 Friars.

For the better part of three years, many Friars fans have wanted the only statewide daily in the nation’s smallest state to come down hard on what they see as an underachieving and uninspired era of Providence basketball. Donaldson flat-out called for an end to the Welsh era on Smith Hill, this just days after fellow columnist Bill Reynolds waved a crotchety finger at Friars fans for booing the team, namely its coach, at home games. Loyal readers of the Projo tend to find Reynolds agreeable and Donaldson disagreeable, so it would be easy to assume that the former has it right this time. But that’s not the case. Donaldson’s column was measured and accurate — I’m sure many Friars fans will say that it didn’t go far enough in dressing down the finely coiffed Welsh. Still, Donaldson concludes his column with a fair epitaph on the Tim Welsh Era in Providence: “It’s time to thank Welsh for a job, if not exactly well-done, than certainly respectably done, and bring in a coach who can do it better.”

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