Coming Up Empty:On the Same Night Keno's Former Drake Team Lost Its Opener To Butler, His Providence Squad Was Beaten By Northeastern University

Keno Davis knows the feeling.

On the same night Keno's former Drake basketball team was losing its season opener under new coach Mark Phelps, Davis' Providence squad was beaten by Northeastern University of Boston, 70-66.

Keno, of course, had a record 28-5 season in 2007-2008 at Drake. It was his only year as the Bulldogs' head coach before accepting a multi-season, $1 million-a-year offer from Providence of the Big East Conference.

It was something Keno had to do. Although he hurt the feelings of some Bulldog fans, I saw nothing at all wrong with his decision to leave Drake after one magical season.

Providence plays its home games in a 14,000-seat arena with the interesting name of Dunkin' Donuts Center.

Nothing like naming rights, huh?

The Friars' opener drew 8,086 fans for the Northeastern game, and no one seemed to be complaining about the attendance in the accounts I read of the game.

However, it would appear to me that Providence might have the same type of attendance challenges Drake had when it plays its home games at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in downtown Des Moines.

Crowds of 7,000 and 8,000 looked small in an arena that had a capacity of 12,000, 13,000 or 14,000 -- depending on the seating plan.

Finally, Drake built the 7,002-seat Knapp Center, which was sold out most of the time in the fantastic season Keno, Adam Emmenecker, Josh Young and the rest of the gang put together in 2007-2008.

Saturday night's opening 58-48 loss to Butler attracted only 6,012 to the Knapp. However, there was plenty of competition for the athletic entertainment dollar that day and night.

Iowa and Iowa State had home football games, and Drake itself had a football game in Jacksonville, Fla. If you had trouble finding an account of it, the story of the Bulldogs' 41-9 loss was buried at the bottom of page 11, close to the Iowa Speedway ad, in Sunday's paper.

Speaking of papers, the Providence Journal has a sidebar on its website that lets readers vote on what they thought about the the Providence-Northeastern game.

The question asked was, "How bad a sign is PC's season-opening loss to Northeastern?"

Here's how the voting stood this morning:

It's not a real big deal
25 percent 35 votes

It's a bad sign
40 percent 56 votes

It's a really bad sign
35 percent 49 votes

Tough crowd out there in Rhode Island, I guess.

"They put it to us," Keno said after the Northeastern game.

Providence won its two exhibition games -- 85-57 over the University of Ottawa and 105-84 over Slippery Rock.

Of the loss to Northeastern -- a university of 14,698 students that belongs to the Colonial Athletic Association with such schools as George Mason, Old Dominion, William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth -- Ruben W. Perez of the Providence Journal wrote, "Davis was clearly disappointed with his team’s inability to find the Huskies’ top players when they squared up to the hoop. PC did a fine job limiting forward Manny Adako inside, but its matchup zone defense let [Matt] Janning and [Eugene] Spates loose too often.

“'Those were the two guys who could beat us and we needed to shut them down. And those were the two guys who beat us. We will try everything we can to improve defensively and not allow the other team’s best player to get those kind of open looks.'”

It's a Davis-dominated coaching staff at Providence, just as it was at Drake. On Keno's Friars staff are Chris Davis and Rodell Davis, both of who with him at Drake.

Chris Davis would have been interested in the Bulldogs' head coaching job when Keno left, but Drake officials clearly wanted someone else -- and chose Phelps, who had been assistant at Arizona State.

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SHONN AS IN GONE

An e-mail from Ernie from Elkader, not his real name:

"Ron, thanks for publishing the photos of Lute Olson's women. Bobbi would be beside herself if she knew what was going on in Lute's life now....Good to see you at the Iowa-Purdue football game Saturday. Not a great performance by Iowa, but another terrific day by Shonn [Gone] Greene."

Ernie from Elkader

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Ernie from Elkader was referring to the photos I published last week of the former Christine Torretti and the present Kelly Pugnea. In the photo at the right, Christine is at the left, Kelly at the right. Christine and Lute recently called it quits after a short marriage, and now Kelly and Lute are engaged to be married. Kelly is a 47-year-old divorcee with two children; Christine was a divorced mother of three when she married Olson. Lute's first wife, Bobbi, died of ovarian cancer several years ago. As for Shonn Greene, the Iowa junior tailback, I wrote over the weekend that he has nothing else to prove in college football, so he should make himself available for the NFL draft. That's why Ernie from Elkader says the 23-year-old Greene is Shonn as in Gone].

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Jeff Valadez of Bend, Ore., writes:

"Ron, I'm not going to say anything to jinx the Hawks, they will surely be up against the wall up in Minneapolis, where we rarely win and rarely tear down the goalposts and rarely get them out of the Metrodome doors, and rarely get more than a couple hundred Hawkeye fans in the stadium and rarely go to a bowl game after this tougher than a pig game.....nonetheless, I have to congratulate you for your being in the position of meeting your prognostication of 8-4.....and by the way....I WON'T see you at a January game.......yours truly..RARELY a Hawkeye fan....Jeff.

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: After making what looked like a foolish prediction that Iowa would finish the regular season at 8-4, I've suddenly got a chance to be right. But it's going to take a victory Saturday night in the collegiate football finale at the Metrodome to accomplish it. It's certainly a game the Hawkeyes can win, and Minnesota is now playing the way we Iowans expect Gopher squad to play -- poorly -- after a very good start].