How Providence College’s ‘Late Night Madness’ became a basketball party big enough for Zac Brown

The show sold out just five days after the Friars announced they landed the country music superstars, the Zac Brown Band, to play for students and alumni at the annual bash inside the Amica Mutual Pavilion.It was the first sold-out Late Night Madness since the college moved the basketball homecoming event off campus from Alumni Hall to the 14,000-seat complex in downtown Providence five years ago. Ask Kevin Connolly about the headliner for Providence College’s “Late Night Madness” this Saturday, and he knows it’s the latter — if he does say so himself. PROVIDENCE — There are baskets, and then there are slam dunks. It’s the largest-ever Late Night Madness in the college’s history, and the buzz on campus, as well as among many far-flung alumni, is palpable. “People couldn’t believe it,” Connolly, a senior assistant vice president at Providence College, associate deputy athletic director, and an organizer for the event, told the Globe, recalling the days after the announcement in August. “They really thought that they were getting, like, tricked on Twitter.” “I had alums contacting me from all over, just being like, I can’t believe this is Providence College,” said Sarah Firetto, the college’s director of alumni relations. “Even if they weren’t able to make it … [they’re] just so proud that, you know, we’re offering something of this magnitude.” What’s now known as Late Night Madness has been around for decades, following in the tradition launched by the late Lefty Driesell, the legendary basketball coach. Driesel invented Midnight Madness at the University of Maryland in October 1971, when he kicked off his team’s training regimen with a mile run just minutes after 12 a.m. — the earliest possible start of practice on the first day allowed under NCAA regulations. Providence, in time, adopted its own version as the practice caught on and spread from campus to campus. These days, the Friars start practice weeks earlier than mid-October — and Late Night Madness is anything but a grueling, sleep-deprived run. Festivities now, instead, focus on introducing the rosters of both the men’s and women’s basketball teams to the larger Friar community, ahead of the season’s first games. The regular season for both teams kicks off Nov. 4. Aside from the headliner, the crowd will also take in performances from student groups. “It’s a huge recruiting event for them,” Connolly said. “They have all their top recruits that come in, so you really just try to put your best foot forward to really kind of close them on the deal.” About six years ago, college officials saw potential to expand the popular event beyond the student body, according to Deirdre Driscoll-Lemoine, associate vice president of college event management and planning. They decided to wrap it into the school’s Homecoming weekend, which draws legions of alumni and families of current students. “We felt this would be the secret sauce that we needed to make a successful weekend,” Driscoll-Lemoine said. “And that has proven to be true, because our numbers have gone up significantly. We are attracting thousands of people to the campus, as well as to the city of Providence.” Part of the move meant providing Late Night Madness with a bigger venue than Alumni Hall, the on-campus athletic facility that holds about 1,500 people. The college had been drawing acts as big as Nick Cannon in 2013 and basketball legend, Shaq, who stopped by three years later. “We couldn’t fit every student in our on-campus facility,” Connolly said. “So the only way that we could do that is if we moved it to the AMP, and then when you moved it there, you got to fill 12,000 seats … So you had to kind of sweeten the pot.” The Friars also have a tremendously strong fan base: There’s a 1,400-name waitlist for season tickets, Connolly said. And they also want tremendous talent. “Like our [Men’s Basketball] Head Coach Kim English said, Late Night Madness is something that you either do big or you don’t do it all, because there’s really no in between,” Connolly said. “And recruits, as they’re going to different places, if it’s not done at a high level, it’s going to be hard to land them. So I just think we’ve made the decision … just to go all in on it.” In its first year downtown, the event brought in John Legend, the singer behind mega hits such as “All of Me,” as its headliner. “I got choked up, when he first came out, because … we were on another level, and there was kind of no going back from that,” Firetto said. Aside from some COVID pandemic interruptions in 2020 and 2021, the college has continued to draw big name acts, such as Kahlid in 2022 and OneRepublic last year — a series that has left organizers trying to outdo themselves each subsequent year, Firetto said. So how do the Friars pull them in? The approach is to find artists who can appeal across generations and still fit a budget, as the college subsidizes tickets so students pay only $40 to attend, Connolly said. The school works with an agency that advises organizers on attracting acts and takes it from there, according to Connolly, The Zac Brown Band, with hits including “Chicken Fried” and “Knee Deep,” is the largest act Late Night Madness has landed, financially speaking, Connolly said. When this year’s headliner was announced, Zac Brown had just played three straight, sold out shows the prior weekend at Gillette Stadium with Kenny Chesney. Days later, Brown had sold out the AMP, too. “I have talked to parents of freshmen who are so excited and like, bought their tickets immediately,” said Madeleine Walsh, who helped make Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” a must-play, Friar game-day anthem before she graduated last year. “I feel like the Late Night Madness lure hasn’t been this big in, like, years.” Susan Sarlund, whose son, Charles, is a junior studying finance, will be in the crowd on Saturday night after she makes the trip up from New Jersey. She wouldn’t miss it, of course: She has been going to Late Night Madness for the last three years. “It’s funny, Charlie will say, ‘Well, Mom, you know, Providence, it’s just different here.’ And that word has … taken on a really true meaning the last couple years,” Sarlund said. “It really is different. It’s a small school — only 4,000 kids. They’re small and mighty.” Sarlund has friends with grown children who attend schools “all over the place,” she said. But none of them have heard of anything quite like this, Sarlund said. This is essentially a concert, she said — a party where Friars from across the ages are together, singing and dancing in the seats, waiting and ready for those first wins of the season. Christopher Gavin can be reached at christopher.gavin@globe.com.