Providence College basketball fans are in for a blast from the past at the start of the upcoming season.

 PC has notified its season ticket holders that they will play the first of two exhibition games at Alumni Hall on Saturday, Oct. 31. The opponent will be Merrimack College of the Northeast 10 Conference. This will be the PC men’s team’s first game at Alumni Hall since a visit by the Russian National Team on Jan. 22, 1978. The Friars’ last regular-season game came on March 1, 1972 with a win over St. John’s before a sellout crowd of 3,400.

 Tickets for the game are expected to be extremely limited. Season ticket holders and students are likely to sell out the building and no public sale of tickets is likely.

 “Hopefully there is a great response four our fans who want to see our team in a unique setting on our campus,” said PC associate athletic director Arthur Parks.

 PC is moving the first of its two exhibition games on campus in large part due to financial reasons. The school pays rent at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center and apparently is choosing to save that money for this one game, and also to give its older fans a taste of the past at Alumni Hall. Some other Big East schools – namely Georgetown and Seton Hall – have moved exhibition games to campus gyms in recent years. In the 2007-08 season, Georgetown played a regular-season game against Radford on campus at McDonough Gym.

 The Friars enjoyed their glory days of the 1950’s and `60’s playing at Alumni Hall. The building opened in 1955 for then first-year coach Joe Mullaney. Over the next 17 seasons, the Friars won 20-plus games 11 times. The team moved its games to the Providence Civic Center for the 1972-73 season.

 In other PC news, the Friars are close to agreeing to play Alabama on a home-and-home basis. The Friars and Crimson Tide also played in both 2002 and `03. Also, six of Keno Davis’ seven new recruits are due on campus this weekend for the start of the school’s second summer session that begins Monday. Russ Permenter, the 6-9 junior college forward from Texas, is not expected. Some of the Friars may participate in summer leagues in Smithfield and Pawtucket, although no definitive plans are in place just yet.

St. Andrew's reloads

 It looks like Mike Hart won’t be down very long at St. Andrew’s. The Saints missed out on the NEPSAC playoffs this season thanks to a very young team that lacked established high-level talent like the school has produced (like Tony Robertson, Demetris Nichols, Rakim Sanders) over the last decade. No more.

 The Saints will boast at least four potential Division One players this coming season. Leading the way will be juniors Michael LaPlante (6-5) of Woonsocket and Mike Carter-Williams (6-3) of Boston, along with senior big man (6-6) Youri Dacy of Fall River. The school will also add Ricky Ledo, the 6-4 guard who helped Bishop Hendricken to the state title. Ledo will repeat his sophomore year and is already being touted as one of the top prospects in the high school class of 2012.

 Another local faring well in the New England preps and on the recruiting scene is Denzel Brito, a rising senior point guard from Wareham, Mass., who is at Lawrence Academy. Brito is hearing from the likes of Rhode Island, Stanford, Fordham, Northeastern and Virginia Commonwealth.

Where to?

 One of the stranger recruiting developments of late is the inability of New York City star Lance `Born Ready’ Stephenson to land at a college. Stephenson is one of the top five prospects in the class of 2009 but academic and personal issues have caused schools like Kansas, St. John’s, Kentucky and Maryland to stop recruiting him. The latest rumors have Stephenson ending up with new coach Isiah Thomas at Florida International or spending next year at a New England prep school – like South Kent Prep – and entering his name in the NBA draft.