SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Billy Donovan and Rick Pitino both spent formative years on Long Island – though in very different eras – but they will forever be linked in the college basketball annals because of what they did together to revolutionize the game in the 1986-87 season. The college game had just adopted the three-point shot and Pitino, coaching his second season with the Friars, envisioned it as a massive weapon. And no one on the Providence roster could deploy it like Donovan, his point guard.

The Friars began that season unranked, but they ended it in the Final Four and changed the game by making three-point shooting not a skill but a strategy.

On Saturday night they were together again at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame where Donovan was enshrined for his incredible

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