UCAP coach B.K. Nordan gets a hug after his team defeats Broad Rock Middle School for the state championship Tuesday.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

It was less than 15 minutes to the tip-off for the state championship, and there was no UCAP. The boys from Broad Rock were beyond warmed up, but the other end of the gym floor at North Kingstown High School was empty.

Then, they arrived, perhaps as they had to. They spilled into the gym, shedding their street clothes as they came. They made it to the biggest game of the year with only minutes to spare.

No big deal. At UCAP, cutting it close is a school tradition. There are players on the basketball team and fans in the stands who know that just getting there can be the hardest part. The basketball game is just a way to celebrate the journey.

“A lot of people said we couldn’t do it,” says Jose Perales, a seventh grader and forward.

“Yeah, when we got to North Kingstown they were telling us, ‘Nobody here thinks you can win,’ ” says Fonzie Garcia, an eighth grader and forward.

So maybe there was a little edge to the game on Tuesday to settle the Rhode Island middle school championship. Maybe the players from UCAP had a little more to prove.

After all, what are the odds of a team making it to the title game without having its own gym?

Yup, UCAP — The Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program — has no gym in its building just off the service road on Carpenter Street in Providence. It has teachers and staff who go a couple of extra miles to give at-risk kids a decent shot at reclaiming an education.

But it has no gym. There are no true home games. Its team could be called the Vagabonds if it chose to give itself a name, which so far it hasn’t. Sometimes, the team practices at the Zuccolo Center on Federal Hill, sometimes at the Davey Lopes Center. And, sometimes, some of its players just head out into the winter cold and play on some familiar blacktop.

Through it all, they face the odds together. They have all had to repeat one grade in school. They often carry social baggage through the school door that would leave a lot of people wondering how they get to the door in the first place.

“We have kids living with their grandparents, with aunts and uncles,” says Al Lemos, the school social worker. “They have no contact with their parents.”

They come from public schools in Central Falls, Cranston and Providence in the hope that UCAP can give them what other schools haven’t — a reason to keep going.

“Kids who drop out of school are no less capable, no less intelligent,” says Rob DeBlois, UCAP’s director. “I would even argue that they tend to be smart kids who don’t think the system works for them.”

On Tuesday afternoon, DeBlois sat in his wheelchair near the team’s bench at North Kingstown High School and watched the improbable bid for a state championship. He has been in a wheelchair since he broke his neck in a college swimming accident. He has directed UCAP since starting it 18 years ago.

“It’s an independent public school created by an act of the General Assembly,” he says.

It works differently because it can. Students who have taken the slow route or the no-show route through school are given a chance to step up the pace at UCAP.

“The teachers here, they back you,” Fonzie says.

But seldom is one day like the next. What’s outside is always threatening to come inside.

“You just hold your breath,” DeBlois says.

On Tuesday, as game time neared, there were surely some people holding their breath and hoping there would be two teams on the floor at 3:45.

Actually, there was an explanation for UCAP’s down-to-the-wire appearance in North Kingstown. The bus had left Providence and headed south in plenty of time. Then a player, a very good player, realized he had forgotten his sneakers. And the driver had to make a detour.

“I’m, like, ‘This is the state championship and you forgot your sneakers?’ ” says Angel Candelier, a guard/forward and eighth grader.

So it was the championship of the almost forgotten sneakers. And it was a whole lot of fun to watch. Broad Rock, from South Kingstown, was undefeated at 16-0. UCAP was 13-3. It lost the three games when some of its best players were in detention.

Some of the UCAP players say they knew early they would win. They knew Broad Rock couldn’t run with them.

But it was close. UCAP opened a 10-point lead and Broad Rock closed it.

But Billy Soriano made up for those forgotten sneakers. He is a guard who has talked to the folks at St. Andrew’s in Barrington. He is rail thin and incredibly quick and he just kept driving through the Broad Rock defense. He is a player to keep an eye on.

And Andrew Levy, a center who is headed for La Salle Academy next year, just kept pulling down rebounds at key points. He also won the sportsmanship trophy for the game.

UCAP did prove too quick and too fast. The school without a gym won the state championship by 10 points.

With just seconds to go, players showered Coach B.K. Nordan with water bottles. He coaches and teaches social studies and looks for places to take his team for practice. When he finds a gym, he often joins the team on the floor.

“I just like playing with the kids,” Nordan says. “I grew up like they did. I know where they’re coming from.”

In the late afternoon of a fine, cold day in North Kingstown, Nordan and his players headed for the bus with a championship. Some players were pulling baggy jeans over their uniforms as they went.

They celebrated at an all-you-can-eat buffet in Cranston.

bkerr@projo.com