New Providence College coach Keno Davis is given a PC basketball jersey by athletic director Bob Driscoll, as Davis is greeted by the students and players during a news conference to announce his hiring yesterday.

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The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — Ryan Holt’s class in International Relations at Providence College was just ending yesterday morning when his cell phone lit up.

“When I saw the message,” he said, “I pumped my fist in the air.”

After weeks of hand-wringing on campus and among alumni, it was finally fist-pumping time at PC.

“Everybody’s happy,” said Anthony Calvino, a sophomore history major who was on his way to Alumni Hall to welcome the Friars’ new basketball coach, Keno Davis.

There is every reason for Friar fans to be happy with the signing of Davis, who was the consensus choice as national Coach of the Year this season after leading Drake to a 28-5 record and its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1971.

He wasn’t the school’s first choice. He wasn’t even among the first three or four that PC athletic director Bob Driscoll courted seriously. But that doesn’t matter.

What matters, as Davis pointed out yesterday, is if he’s the right choice.

There is every reason to believe that he is, and no reason to think that he isn’t.

“I’ve been walking around today,” said PC’s president, the Rev. Brian Shanley, “with a huge smile on my face. I told Keno this morning, he’s the answer to a prayer. We wanted someone who was the right fit for Providence College. When I talked to Keno, I knew we had the guy we’d been waiting for. It came in God’s time, not our time.”

For the longest time, it seemed as if the Friars were the basketball equivalent of the Israelites, wandering in the desert. Former Friar Jim Larranaga, the highly successful coach at George Mason, turned down the job he would have jumped at earlier in his career. Several other big-name coaches were courted behind the scenes. Driscoll last week offered the job to UMass coach Travis Ford, who, surprisingly, decided to remain in Amherst.

“Everybody was kind of nervous,” said Calvino, “because a couple of coaches had turned us down. Nobody knew what was going on.”

As it turned out, Driscoll knew what he was doing.

There were some doubts during the process because he was a “hockey guy.” But the thing about “hockey guys” is that if they get slammed into the boards, they don’t stay down on the ice moaning. They get right up and get back in the game.

In Davis, Driscoll has gotten a guy who has proven he can win at a small, private school in a highly competitive league.

“Drake was picked to finish ninth in the Missouri Valley Conference,” Driscoll said. “Not only did they win the regular season title, but they also won the conference tournament. They won 21 consecutive games and were only beaten in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on a 3-point shot at the buzzer that you’d never think was going to go in.”

Friar fans could be forgiven if they were beginning to think they were never going to get a coach. Not a good one, at least.

But, in Davis, it seems they’ve landed a coach who was worth the wait.

And who, hopefully, will be worth the approximately $1 million a year PC will be paying him annually.

“He’s the kind of coach we needed,” said Calvino, expressing a sentiment seemingly widespread among the basketball fans in the student body. “He turned a team with no ‘big-name’ players into a 28-5 team. He had a great year at a small school. I think he’s going to be great at developing talent.”

Davis is taking over a team with talent. The Friars’ top nine scorers all return, including five who averaged in double figures — Jeff Xavier, Weyinmi Efejuku, Dwain Williams, Brian McKenzie and Geoff McDermott — along with 6-foot-11 Randall Hanke, another player with potent offensive potential, and point guard Sharaud Curry, whose absence this season because of injury may have cost the Friars a postseason tourney berth.

“I’m glad,” said Holt, who is the sports director for the campus radio station, WDOM, “that this ordeal is over. I was surprised when Ford didn’t take the job. I really thought he’d come. I felt bad. I felt we might be getting shortchanged a bit in the eyes of the national media.

“To have hired the national coach of the year really saves face. The people I’ve talked to on campus are really excited. It’s been a dark, pessimistic place the last couple of years. This is a new day for us.”

“Is this not,” Driscoll asked, “a great day to be a Friar?”

It’s a day for PC fans, after a month of hand-wringing, to do some serious fist-pumping.

jdonalds@projo.com