Welsh

PROVIDENCE — Soon after the next Providence College basketball coach moves into his office at Alumni Hall, a stark, cold reality will chill his bones.

The coach will meet his new team and smile broadly at the sight of five seniors and as many as eight players who’ve enjoyed big nights in the Big East. But while a veteran-laden team gives the next coach a chance to compete in the league in 2008-09, a major reconstruction of the program will be his top priority this summer.

The Friars lose one senior (Charles Burch) off this year’s team and have already replaced him with 6-foot-8 New Jersey high schooler Bilal Dixon. That was the easy part. Replacing seniors-to-be Weyinmi Efejuku, Geoff McDermott, Jon Kale, Jeff Xavier and Randall Hanke will prove to be much tougher.

Tim Welsh and his staff always knew that filling the scholarships of their present junior class would require an awful lot of hard work. Steve DeMeo, PC’s associate head coach, says he’s thought about the incoming class of 2009 for two years and worked on identifying replacements when prospects were mere high school freshmen.

But when PC decided to let Welsh work this year with just one season left on his contract, it restricted the ability of the coaching staff to close the deal with recruits. After all, the head coach is almost always the most decisive factor in where prep stars go to college and Welsh’s contract clearly left him in limbo over the last six months.

DeMeo and Welsh’s other assistants are under contract at PC through June. They’re monitoring the academic progress of the current players but also still talking to prospects for that all-important Class of 2009.

“We’ve spent an enormous amount of time on that class,” said DeMeo. “Certainly more questions came up frequently because of the rumors [about Welsh’s status] out there but we’re still in contact with a lot of potential recruits.”

Various Internet reports have shown that DeMeo and other PC coaches have been in contact with several local players since the class of ’09 is regarded as one of the deepest in New England in a decade. PC has also done a lot of work in the New York-New Jersey area and also in Georgia. Players in the Peachtree State have noticed the success of Atlanta natives Sharaud Curry and Marshon Brooks at Providence and are expressing interest in following in their footsteps.

Among the prospects who’ve mentioned PC in their recruitment are Mfon Udofia of Stone Mountain, Ga., Jeremy Olsen of Lawrenceville, Ga., Darryl Bishop of Boston, Evan Smotrycz of Reading, Mass., Tevin Baskin of Stamford, Conn., and James Padgett of Brooklyn, N.Y. Of this group, Udofia and Baskin are regarded as top-100 recruits.

Timing is everything in recruiting, of course. Even if one of the above players wanted to commit to PC, the next coach may not choose to offer a scholarship. The next PC staff will certainly come aboard with relationships in place from the schools they’ve worked for. If the coach is from Indiana, for example, chances are the Friars could instantly get involved with recruits with Midwest roots.

The precarious position PC placed Welsh in during the last six months certainly didn’t help stock the ’09 class. Even with plenty of openings, the Friars not only couldn’t secure a commitment but were also beaten out for two Rhode Island natives in juniors Erik Murphy (verbal to Florida) and Mike Marra (Louisville). PC rarely received verbal commitments from high school juniors in Welsh’s tenure but that’s becoming all the rage on the recruiting scene. Currently 15 of the top 50 juniors in the country, according to Scout.com, have given verbal commitments to colleges.

Athletic director Bob Driscoll has spent the last few days working the phones and checking the backgrounds of possible head coaches. His search is restricted a bit by the NCAA Tournament.

“A number of the people that we’ll hopefully start looking at are in the tournament,” Driscoll said. “Out of respect for them, we’re not going to start those conversations [yet]. But there’s ways to find out whether people are interested without messing that whole system up for them.”

What Driscoll also needs to be asking is not only whether a coach knows his X’s and O’s but whether he has a group of assistants in mind who are ready to bring talent to the Friar program. A frequent trick of coaches these days is to hire an assistant as part of a package deal that brings a big-time recruit along as well. Kansas State, Boston College and Memphis are just some of the many schools who’ve added player-coach package deals to their programs in recent years.

Welsh’s staff wasn’t only focused on the ’09 class. In case a player currently on scholarship decided to transfer, the staff was covering its bases for another recruit for next fall. New Jersey point guard Dwan McMillan visited PC for the regular season finale against Villanova. McMillan is regarded as the type of pure point guard the program has lacked for several years but that’s a determination that the next Friar coach will confront in his first few days on the job.

kmcnamar@projo.com