Crisis leaves E.P. boys’ cagers with sense of ‘what if?’

Abrupt end to potentially historic season will linger for a long time

By Mike Rego
Posted 4/14/20

EAST PROVIDENCE — Although it’s been just about a month since they last took the court, the players and coaches of the East Providence High School boys’ basketball team are still …

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Crisis leaves E.P. boys’ cagers with sense of ‘what if?’

Abrupt end to potentially historic season will linger for a long time

Posted

EAST PROVIDENCE — Although it’s been just about a month since they last took the court, the players and coaches of the East Providence High School boys’ basketball team are still stunned about the manner in which the 2019-20 season ended so abruptly due to the coronavirus outbreak and likely forever leaving them with a sense of wonder.

“We’re all kind of still in a state of disbelief, I guess,” EPHS head coach Joe Andrade said recently. “For some reason, you still have the feeling we’re going to restart the season in a week or two, but it’s over. We’re not going back.

“It sucks. Everything we worked for is done. And not just for us, there were a bunch of teams still alive. This season will never be complete for any of us.”

The Townies were in the throughs of their best winter in four decades, having already won more regular season games (13) than any other from the program during that span and tallied more than 20 victories total (21-6 overall), including a first-round triumph in the Open State Championship Tourney.

But only hours after their 103-82 defeat Lincoln on Thursday, March 12, their season and that of almost every winter athlete in the state and nearly all in the country was done. COVID-19 would eventually reach the pandemic level, stunningly and dramatically changing all our lives in the short term at best and in the long term at worst.

“Having a record season getting cancelled sucks,” said EPHS wing Josh Kauffman, one of eight seniors on the Townies’ roster this past winter. “We had a legitimate chance to do something no E.P. team has done in over 40 years, but now it will always be a ‘what if?’”

E.P.’s starting five had much to do with the team’s success. Kauffman and fellow backcourt senior Josh Pena each averaged at or near 11 points per game. Classmate R.J. Pina led the Townies in scoring and rebounding, a “double-double” of 20 and 10, respectively, each night. Junior transfer Brian Taylor tallied about 16 ppg while another senior, Zach Russell, contributed almost eight points per. And yet another player in his final year, Matt DosSantos, chipped in nearly 6 ppg off the bench.

“Brian coming in helped. They (league coaches) didn’t know that. And even I didn’t know he would be as good,” Andrade said. “Also, R.J., Josh, Zach and Justin all improved, so regardless we knew going in we would be fine.”

The Townies, depending on your point of view, were correctly or incorrectly off the proverbial radar of teams expected to compete with the very best in the state at the beginning of the year. The coaches in Division I slotted EPHS for ninth in a preseason league ranking. And the popular Twitter feed “BallinRI” failed to rate the Townies among Rhode Island’s top 10 squads before the season tipped. Those slights, perceived or otherwise, certainly fueled the players’ fire a bit.

“It was a great year for us. We did many things E.P. teams couldn't do,” said Pina. “We showed Rhode Island what kind of team we could be after not being ranked a top 10 team in the preseason rankings.”

By year’s end, though, East Providence was properly recognized. All five starters were selected for league postseason honors and Andrade was chosen as the D-I co-coach of the year.

“It was just a very upsetting and heartbreaking way to end the season. Especially being a senior, those were some of my final games as a Townie, and it's all over now. It still just feels like a bad dream that I'll wake up from sooner or later,” said Pena.

He continued, “It's just unfortunate to see that all of our hard work and grind over the last four years was thrown away. It's been very hard to cope with, I still talk to the team about it almost daily and we're all still in disbelief. It was a very fun and successful season. We had a very historic run and did some things that not many teams can say they have. I love this team and I love this community. So it's sad to watch the season go down this way, but it was an absolute blast playing with this group of guys for the last four years.”

The seniors had a hand in some manner in 43 league victories during their four years at EPHS, and enjoyed an especially fine final regular season that continued into the playoffs. The postseason included a dramatic overtime victory against rival LaSalle in the D-I quarters and the Open Tourney held promise, but it would have admittedly been an uphill climb.

Fourteenth-seeded East Greenwich, the upstarts from D-II who beat D-I Mt. Pleasant in the first round, awaited the Townies in the quarters. Second-seeded and reigning state champ North Kingstown would have likely been next in the semis. The Skippers bested the locals in their sole regular season outing, a game N.K. controlled for the most part by double figures until a late E.P. rally fell short.

Likely the last hurdle would have been Hendricken, winners over the Townies en route to the D-I playoff title in early March and three-time victors over E.P. already this past winter.

“I always look at the Open State Tournament as about matchups. Once you know your matchup and seed, you get a sense of how things could go, and I thought the matchups fell well for us starting with Lincoln and then East Greenwich beating Mt. Pleasant. Not to say that they couldn’t have beaten us but it wasn’t a D-I team," Andrade said. "And who knows who comes out of those other games. We definitely had a chance against N.K. They beat us the first time, but Zach was out injured and Brian was in foul trouble in the first half. They had no answer for him, but again it’s that ‘what if?’ You don’t know, so I thought everything worked out for us, match-up wise, but we’ll never know.”

What Andrade does understand, and appreciates very much, is the uniqueness of his ’19-20 team. It, hopefully, wasn’t a once in a generation unit, but he will remember its members fondly and so will others.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have a group like this ever again. They worked hard at the game. They worked hard in the offseason. The wanted to be great,” Andrade added. “They’re smart kids. The faculty and staff gravitated towards them because they are so likable. We have talent coming in next year, good kids coming in, but it’s going to be very tough to duplicate, to ever get a group like this together again.”

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.