What URI's Run in March Means to the Program
For the first time since 1999, the Rhode Island Rams made their return to the NCAA tournament. In 1999, Lamar Odom led the Rams back to the Big Dance after beating Temple in the Atlantic 10 championship but they went nowhere. Straight off, the University of Rhode Island men's basketball team took care of business and beat a wounded Creighton Bluejays team, 84-72.
Next, the Rams took an undoubted top-10 team in the country, the Oregon Ducks, wire-to-wire and should have won, all things considered. Beyond being a top-10 team in college basketball, the Ducks finished their conference tournament wins with 29 wins and earned themselves a #3 seed. So, yeah, the Rhode Island men's basketball team had THAT Oregon team on the ropes. One more rebound in the final two minutes of the game and I would be talking about how Dan Hurley's team advanced to the Sweet 16; where they would have stood a good chance against the Michigan Wolverines.
Most importantly, Dan Hurley and his team have now revitalized the university's love for college basketball, particularly Rhode Island Rams basketball. Plain and simple, sold out home crowds and highly populated home crowds win games for their respective college basketball team. There is a reason why the Kansas Jayhawks rarely ever lose at Phog Allen Fieldhouse. Given what the Rhode Island Rams have accomplished, I expect big home crowds in the Ryan Center to no longer be a rarity but instead, I expect it to become the norm. URI has had a large amount of success in home games with inconsistent attendance numbers. In the next season and beyond, I can only imagine what this team is capable of when all of the seats in the Ryan Center are consistently filled up. Plus, on official recruiting visits, impressionable high school basketball players are attracted to big crowds and raucous atmospheres.
From an economic standpoint, the donors will certainly be willing to invest money into helping this program now, more than it ever has in this century. The additional funds should be used for the training facilities and better transportation to games for the players. In case no one has noticed, state-of-the-art training facilities and top-of-the-line transportation leads to top-100 recruits for college basketball programs of any size. Even though they have not had any significant success in their past two seasons, two of URI's conference opponents, the St. Louis Billikens and the UMASS Minutemen, have both brought in fantastic recruiting classes recently due to the two factors that I just mentioned.
When Creighton and URI or Cincinnati and URI go to recruit the same high school player, there is a good chance that they are going to picking the team that won those matchups and I am sure that Dan Hurley will give them a reminder.
