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Addition to Friarbasketball.com Staff

Dunk Panoramic

We’ve been at this for quite some time now.

For a few years I’d contemplated starting a Providence basketball blog, but didn’t want to do so until I could find a niche.

The lightbulb went off in the summer of 2009 as I realized that there was an opportunity to not just write about who PC was recruiting, but get out there and see them time and again throughout the season. I’d take that knowledge and angle it into how these players might fit into Providence’s system and who they might compare to from the program’s past.

In December 2009, friarbasketball.com was born. For my first article I drove six hours round trip on a Friday night, and repeated the exercise the next day to see Friar commits Gerard Coleman and Ron Giplaye play at a tournament at Brewster Academy.

Jonathan Givony (then of Draft Express, since hired by ESPN to cover the Draft) had tweeted that Coleman was a better player than Brewster Academy’s Will Barton. This wasn’t Givony’s shining moment, as Barton was perhaps the top shooting guard in the country and proved it by scoring 34 points in a lashing of Coleman and Tilton. Barton took to Twitter to fire back at Givony and my love for covering prep tournaments was born.

That was Keno Davis’s second season in Providence. It was also the beginning of the end for Davis, who won 19 games in his first year, but only 12 in year two. I covered the Friars in 2009-10, but as the Friars spiraled out of contention I followed the story, and the story at that time was the future.

After two years of covering both the Friars and New England recruiting by myself, I invited Craig Belhumeur to join our staff. A year later Craig Leighton came aboard and we were off and running.

While I started the site because I loved to write and wanted to find unique ways to cover the program, I found greater enjoyment in seeing the site evolve.

We began adding highlight reels, creating podcasts, and conducting post game interviews. This all coincided with the program’s rise in 2014 through Kris Dunn’s final two years at PC.

Last season was the first in which I felt as though we maintained the status quo, and in evaluating how we covered the team last year I felt as though we’d stopped moving forward.

That won’t be the case this year.

I am happy to announce that we’ve added Kyle Jose to our staff. You’ve already seen some of Kyle’s work this season, as he produced highlights of the Mal Brown scrimmage and from the exhibition against UConn.

With each addition to the site I’ve aimed to bring in someone who excelled where I did not. Craig Belhumeur redesigned the site and enjoyed being in front of the camera, while Craig Leighton brought a historical knowledge of the program and dug up recruiting tidbits that I didn’t know existed.

Kyle is going to take our video offerings to the next level. We’ve created a new section on the homepage for videos, and Kyle will produce highlights after every game. I will continue with the “PC in 7 Minutes” series, but Kyle has a much broader and impressive video production skill set than I do, and he’ll help us tell the Friar story in a completely different way. He’s a long-time PC season ticket holder and is passionate about all facets of the program. We are hoping to not only provide highlights of the current team, but also of New England area recruits and commits.

I couldn’t be more excited to have him as part of the site and really feel as though he is going to take our coverage to another level.

We appreciate everyone who has read and supported the site over the past eight years and we look forward to continuing to find creative ways to tell the Providence basketball story.

6 Comments

  1. wayne pacheco

    November 6, 2017 at 3:28 pm

    Dear Kevin: Just want you to know that as a lifelong Friar fan living in Missouri, how much I enjoy your content and quality. The reporting is fair and honest while being very entertaining as well. Thank you and your staff for the efforts. I appreciate it and look forward to all you bring to us. p.s. Last year I got to make a five hour drive each way to see Providence beat Creighton in Omaha Nebraska. What a game!

  2. Kevin Farrahar

    November 6, 2017 at 3:35 pm

    Hi Wayne,

    I appreciate the kind words. It’s really a team effort here and it’s one I really enjoy being a part of. The success of PC under Ed Cooley certainly helps keep it interesting.

    Thanks for the note.
    Kevin

  3. Joe iacoi

    November 6, 2017 at 7:37 pm

    Nice addition

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  5. Bob Mackey

    November 7, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    The resources you bring are outstanding including the quality of the writing. Enhancing the videos is a big plus but a tall order as your video pieces are already top notch.

  6. Dan Murray

    November 9, 2017 at 10:26 pm

    You’re adding to an already top notch staff.

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