It began Saturday night.

The Providence College basketball team was trailing West Virginia in the second half and the boos started.

And if you didn’t know any better, it could have been nearly 30 years ago when Gary Walters was booed, and several years later when — as unbelievable at it was — Joe Mullaney was booed, and later when Rick Barnes was booed all the way to Clemson.

Tim Welsh is just the latest, in this dirty little secret of PC basketball over the years.

The president pays dearly for his White House?

So does the PC basketball coach, which is a great job as long as you win.

Booing Welsh became the new parlor game late last year when his name was announced before games, a smattering of discontent. Saturday night it bordered on becoming ugly.

So what is going on here?

I suspect it’s several things.

At the most obvious, it’s the fact that the Friars are not as good as the fans want them to be. The basketball world has changed. Not only is the Big East a monster of a league that takes few prisoners, it’s a league with an unofficial tier system. The top teams are trying to get to the Final Four and win the national championship. The Friars are trying to get to the NCAA Tournament once every three or four years and save the coach’s job.

That’s the first disconnect.

It’s not the only one.

I have sat in the office with every PC coach since Mullaney’s second term, a list that includes Rick Pitino, Gordie Chiesa, Barnes and Pete Gillen. All have told me the same thing: this is a tougher job than they thought it was going to be, a tougher job than people realize. And yet people here expect this program to win and win big, as if for no other reason than once upon a time it did.

Wasn’t that always at the root of PC basketball, the little school that overcame all the obstacles, the little school that overcame the odds? Isn’t that the theme that runs through all of the success, the defying of the odds?

And what happens when the odds win?

The coach is in the cross hairs with a target on his back.

And I suspect that this is more so now than it used to be, for the simple reason that in this age of seat licenses it costs more to go to the games. It’s no longer an inexpensive night out. And with that comes increased expectations.

Which brings us back to Welsh.

He is in his 10th season now, and maybe it’s been played out here. Ten years is a long time in this day and age, to the point that few coaches remain in the same place longer than that unless they either win big or have incredible cachet. Maybe 10 years is a long time now for any Friar basketball coach, which is always about swimming uphill in the Big East, even in the best of times. Maybe this has become a fan base that merely wants a new face, fair or not, and that’s just the way it is.

But even if Providence College ultimately decides it wants to go into the future with a new coach, this is not being handled well. Letting Welsh go into this year with his contract status unresolved, when everyone knew he had two years left and that no school lets a coach go into a last year of a contract, has made this season a referendum year on Welsh.

Is he supposed to go to the NCAA Tournament to get a contract extension? The NIT?

What’s the criteria here?

That’s never been explained, at least not publicly.

So what we now have is that every game becomes a referendum on Welsh. Lose and he is booed. Win and he survives to the next game and it starts all over again.

No matter that his point guard hasn’t played all year, save a few minutes. No matter that this is only the first of February, a long way to go before this season sleeps. No matter that this is a team that beat UConn on the road and should have beaten Notre Dame, a team that’s still in the mix in a Big East where everyone seems to be beating each other up.

He is booed.

What does that do to the players?

And what does that do to a program?

It poisons a season, that’s what it does.

What the school should have done last spring is extend Welsh for a year, which would have taken him through next year with a veteran team, and then make a decision on him. Instead, we got last Saturday night and a referendum on the court that swings with the scoreboard.

And you can rest assured that this does nothing to help a program that needs all the help it can get. You can rest assured that this is used against PC in the recruiting wars, for why would you want to go to a school where the coach’s future is as up in the air as deep three? Why would you want to go to a school where the team is booed and the arena seems to turn into in a mass of discontent every time there’s a bad stretch?

You wouldn’t.

Which brings us back, once again, to Welsh and expectations.

For that’s the subtext here. Welsh has been to two NCAA Tournaments and made three NIT appearances in nine years. Many people in basketball would tell you that’s not bad in today’s Big East. Not at PC. Even if many fans don’t want to hear it.

Regardless, Welsh deserves better than being booed in The Dunk, deserves better than to have every game a referendum on his future, whatever that future turns out to be.

Deserves better than to have this season poisoned when it has six weeks to go.

breynold@projo.com