PROVIDENCE -- When Dave Gavitt left his coaching position at Providence College in 1979 to be the Big East's first commissioner, he says his life in basketball changed forever.

No longer was he riding the coaching conveyor belt, trying to win games, recruit better players and push his program to loftier heights. Now his goals were much broader. Now he wanted to find ways to help grow the game he loved and make the sport better for the players, coaches, fans and media who were along for the ride.

Mission accomplished. You could make a case that Gavitt's work as a coach and administrator influenced more people through basketball's family tree than anyone in the last 50 years. That's why he'll become Rhode Island's first native son (Westerly) inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Friday in Springfield, Mass.

Former players, coaches and administrators who shined under Gavitt's watch have praised his understated genius and vision in compiling a basketball résumé few men could ever match. PC coach, Olympic coach, Big East commissioner, the creator of the 64-team NCAA Tournament, Boston Celtics CEO, Hall of Fame chairman. Gavitt has done it all, positively influencing the basketball lives of so many people. Here are four examples.

JIM CALHOUN

When Jim Calhoun left Northeastern to coach at Connecticut in May 1986, he already knew Gavitt well. The two coached against one another in the 1970s and had several mutual friends and, as Calhoun says, "If you grew up in New England like I did, Dave was The Guy, and still is The Guy in many ways."

But in March 1986, Calhoun was weighing a job offer from Northwestern while also casting an eye toward a UConn post that was rumored to be opening.

"I remember it clear as a bell. I'm at the Final Four in Dallas in 1986 and Bob Knight came to my room and we talked about the Northwestern job," he said. "Northwestern was very aggressive, and I went out to Chicago and they gave me a Mercedes-Benz to drive with a cell phone. I had never driven a Mercedes and I didn't know what a cell phone was. But Bob took me aside and just said Northwestern is a great institution, but I should be in the Big East because that's a league of coaches and personalities. And he said that's all because of Dave Gavitt."

In Calhoun's first season in Storrs, the Huskies won nine games, but the new coach had an occasional lunch date to ease his wounds. "Having him come up and visit me a couple times in my first two years really helped me," Calhoun said.

But the Gavitt touch was needed in other ways, too. The Big East that Calhoun walked into sat atop the college basketball world. Just a year earlier, three of the Final Four teams hailed from the league, with Villanova beating Georgetown for the title in one of the sport's most historic contests. The conference was filled with bigger-than-life coaches with names such as Carnesecca, Thompson, Pitino, Boeheim, Massimino and Carlesimo. Calhoun was the newcomer, but one Gavitt looked out for.

"Our league meeting then was at Dorado Beach in Puerto Rico," he said. "We have this big dinner the first night and Dave's wife, Julie, does the seating. Well, Rick Pitino and I were big rivals at Northeastern and BU, so I sat beside Jo-Ann Pitino and my wife Pat sat next to Rick. We left the dinner and Pat thought Rick was so nice and charming. Everything was by design. But Dave didn't do things in an overt, calculating manner. He did it with class."

By the time Calhoun elevated UConn into a consistent national power, Gavitt had left for the Celtics. But Calhoun, more than anyone else in Storrs, never forgot his impact on the program's rise. "At UConn, we like to say excellence is not by accident but by design. Dave Gavitt lived that idea. He saw the potential in UConn before others did. After we won our first national championship in 1999, I remember telling people that without Dave, we don't get into the Big East and we don't win the national championship. I truly believe that."

Calhoun entered the Hall last year along with Syracuse's Jim Boeheim. Two other Big East legends, Lou Carnesecca and John Thompson, also are in the Hall and will present their old boss on Friday. "Dave Gavitt is our gift in New England to basketball. His imprint, his genius, is everywhere. It's not my place to tell Rhode Island or the City of Providence what to do, but everyone there should be bursting at the seams with pride," Calhoun said.

LOU CARNESECCA

When Gavitt left PC to run the Big East, the Friars were one of the few national programs in the East. One other was St. John's, the New York City school with a long history of success stretching back to the 1950s and the great coach Joe Lapchick. The Redmen mentor in the '70s was Carnesecca, a feisty Italian who danced along the sidelines and piled up 20-win seasons. When he first heard about the Big East, Little Louie wasn't jumping for joy.

In the late '70s, Carnesecca found himself on a flight home from Italy with Gavitt after a coaching clinic. Gavitt spent the time selling his former rival on the idea of an Eastern league. "You always have some doubts, sure," Carnesecca said last week. "I had it pretty comfortable, so to speak. But as it turned out, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to myself and St. John's. It elevated all of us into a new level, a new stratosphere. Dave likes to say he convinced me on the Big East after a couple glasses of vino flying back from Italy. There's some truth to that."

The Big East was a year old when Carnesecca outrecruited Duke for Brooklyn's Chris Mullin. Mark Jackson from Queens followed the next year and St. John's was primed and ready to run with anyone. Junior-college star Walter Berry put the team over the top and into the 1985 Final Four. "We became the number-one league in the country so fast. It was just a wonderful, wonderful idea," Carnesecca said.

The Big East was an instant TV hit, with St. John's vs. Georgetown its first rivalry. Mullin and Patrick Ewing were the two best players in the country in 1984 and '85, and Carnesecca and Thompson leveraged the notoriety to the hilt. "We had some great personalities, and Dave mixed the soup pretty good," Carnesecca said.

JOE HASSETT

Most Providence College basketball fans assume that Joe Hassett was born to be a Friar. After all, he grew up less than a mile from campus, went to high school at La Salle and sneaked into Alumni Hall as a youngster. But Dave Gavitt didn't take much for granted.

In the winter of 1973, Gavitt was busy leading the best team he ever coached, with Ernie DiGregorio firing the fast break, Kevin Stacom filling the lane and Marvin Barnes sweeping the glass. Yet the night before the team flew to Los Angeles for a regular-season showdown against Bill Walton and UCLA, Gavitt and assistant coaches Nick Macarchuck and Jimmy Adams went recruiting.

"Boston College had someone at my games or practice for 30 straight days when I was a senior," Hassett said. "I wasn't sure what Dave thought, really. Well, we hosted Central just before Providence was going out to play UCLA and the whole coaching staff came to the game. They had some more important things to worry about than me but that said a lot. Dave told my dad when they got back from L.A. he wanted to come by our house. He did, and that was that."

Hassett's teams at PC were some of Gavitt's best. Each was ranked in the top 20 and featured disparate talents such as Bruce Campbell, Bill Eason and Dwight Williams. Hassett said blending that group was Gavitt's biggest challenge.

"Dave is great with people and those teams needed that," he said. "We were all stars in high school and all wanted to take the shots. Bill Eason came down to North Carolina or Providence so he came here expecting to be a star. Well, I was a year older and I was a shooter. We were like the Red Sox, 25 guys, 25 cabs.

"We always used to fly to New York for games there, but Dave recognized this problem with our team so we started taking the bus. We'd stop at Manero's restaurant in Connecticut and have a big meal, and he did it to get us on the same page. By the end, we all liked each other."

Hassett thrived in PC's family atmosphere. He recalls Julie Gavitt always being on him to cut his hair and some long talks with Dave on bus rides. "It's funny, I remember him talking about his friend, Dean Smith, and how the ACC did things the right way. He always thought we could do that in the East, in the media capital of the world. And, sure enough, that's exactly what he did."

RICK BARNES

While Gavitt cultivated close, personal relationships with coaches both in the Big East and elsewhere, he may have become closest with the current mentor at the University of Texas.

Back in 1988, PC hired an unknown coach who had only one season of experience at George Mason. Rick Barnes was 31 years old and walking into a league dominated by Thompson, Boeheim, Carnesecca, Massimino and Carlesimo. It was a daunting task for anyone, let alone someone with so little experience and no local roots. "To keep my head above water early on was a challenge and just knowing he was always there helped me so much," said Barnes. "I'd probably say he saved my coaching life. Without him covering up for all the mistakes I made or would've made, I don't know where I'd be."

Gavitt would call Barnes late at night or early in the morning, knowing precisely when a coach needed a good word. He'd offer encouragement or provide a blistering critique, whichever was needed. Since the Big East's offices were just a jump shot away from the PC campus, the two men often grabbed a quick lunch. One phone call wasn't welcomed, however. In 1990, PC suffered a painful loss in overtime at Villanova and Barnes struck a fan as he left the floor. The next morning, Gavitt phoned and requested a lunch date.

"I knew I was in big, big trouble so I pick him up and he's talking about something else in sports while I'm thinking 'what am I going to tell him?' " Barnes said. "We sit down and he says, 'tell me what you're thinking." So I go off, saying we're getting screwed by the referees and all. He sits back, takes a drag on that cigarette of his and says 'go ahead. Tell me more.' "

"Then it's his turn to talk and he kills me. He said I did an incredible job my first year, 'but this year if I would grade you, I'd fire you.' So he's blistering me about my team and the coaches and all but never mentions me punching that fan. We talk a bit more and get up and leave and before he gets into his car he says, 'Hickory (Barnes' hometown), I would've hit that guy, too, but we don't need to be hitting people in the Big East.' "

Even after Gavitt left the Big East to run the Boston Celtics, he stayed tight with Barnes and other college coaching friends.

"One year we were having a real hard time trying to play Trent Forbes at point guard. Then we beat Arizona right before Christmas," Barnes said. "So Dave comes into the locker room to say hi to the coaches and the players. Trent is sitting there, really happy, and I went over and hugged him. Dave pulls up a chair and says, 'You don't know who I am but you're doing a really good job."

"So Trent looks up at him and says, 'I know who you are. You're The Man.' Trent couldn't say it any better. Dave Gavitt is The Man."

kmcnamar@projo.com / (401) 277-7340