PROVIDENCE — It’s the goal of any team to learn an early-season painful lesson or two in a win.
That’s not what happened to the Providence College Friars Friday night.
The youthful Friars learned a bucket-full of lessons and will now have eight days to brood over them after blowing a 20-point lead and losing to the Massachusetts Minutemen, 79-78, before a stunned crowd of 10,427 at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.
The list of lessons PC had to swallow in one of the worst home losses in years is long.
For one, you can never take your foot off the pedal but sparked by Luwane Pipkins (26 points) and 15 second-half points on five 3-pointers from Carl Pierre, UMass out-scored the Friars, 47-28, in the final 20 minutes.