By: Ethan Hurwitz, Toni Wetmore & Connor Wilson
When former Quinnipiac men’s basketball head coach Billy Mecca took the floor at the program’s alumni event at Haven Beer Company last Saturday, he was met with raucous applause – even though he kept saying that he didn’t want it.
“I never want this day to be about me, and it never was about me,” said Mecca, now the university’s senior associate athletic director. “It’s about the alumni to start with, whether you were an alumni that played for me or you were here when I was just doing Billy … Y’all don’t just realize the incredible impact you’ve had on my life.”
The annual alumni event, held this year after the Bobcats hosted the Niagara Purple Eagles (which just so happens to be Mecca’s alma mater), welcomed back dozens of former basketball players to honor the now-broadcaster. Some played under Mecca when he was an assistant coach, and a few were on the first team that Mecca led as the head man. Others just had smaller interactions with Mecca that still stick.
“He just keeps it real, he doesn’t sugarcoat anything,” Quinnipiac Athletics Hall of Famer Joyce Furman (WBB ‘85) said. “If you don’t like it, too bad. You better take it or leave it, (and) he cares.”
So what does Billy Mecca mean to those around the program? For many, the same stories reappear.
Nobody spends as much time with Mecca on-campus nowadays than his broadcasting partners Steve Lenox and Dianne Nolan. This trio calls every Quinnipiac basketball home game — both men’s and women’s — and have been doing so for years. Lenox specifically has been the lead play-by-play announcer since 2017 and has had Mecca as his literal “right hand man” for every game since then.
“You know, at some point on the drive, getting up the hill, a smile comes to your face,” Lenox said. “You know he’s coming in and we’re gonna have a good time. We get to talk about basketball for two hours.”
“Talking basketball” and Billy Mecca go hand in hand. It almost has to, seeing that he’s been around Quinnipiac since his first season as an assistant coach in 1978-79. He’s seen it all from the program’s lone NCAA Tournament Division II victory in 1980 over Bryant to last year’s MAAC regular season championship and historic 24 win season, and everything in between.
“He’s worked with different administrators, coaches, he’s done a lot of different things,” Lenox said. “He’s got great stories. He’s a podcast on Quinnipiac history with athletics.”
For Mecca, his relationship with the university and its athletic programs stretches much further than wins and losses on the court. He strives to build a sense of trust with each and every athlete that walks through the doors.
“The student athletes really connect with him, because they know he cares,” Nolan said. “You always connect with people who care. He doesn’t have an ulterior motive. He just wants the best for the student athlete, and I think they sense that.”
Nolan, like Lenox, has worked on broadcasts with Mecca since 2017, but their relationship stems much further back. Nolan was the head coach of the women’s basketball team at Fairfield for 26 years where she also coached current Quinnipiac women’s basketball coach Tricia Fabbri. Once Fabbri took the job in Hamden in 1998, it introduced Nolan to Mecca for the first time.
“We talk about so many different things, but when you talk about a good heart, that’s what he has,” Nolan said. “He bleeds blue. I mean, he loves Quinnipiac, and he is just such a kind person, very much, a God loving person, a wonderful husband and family member.”
What makes Mecca’s bond with the university so special and unique is that it stretches much farther than the arena up on York Hill. Edward C. “Ned” Burt Jr. was among those in attendance on Saturday. Burt wasn’t a former player of Mecca’s or a former teammate, rather an adjunct professor in the legal studies department at Quinnipiac.
“I’ve been friends with Billy since I started teaching as an adjunct at Quinnipiac University — Quinnipiac College back then,” Burt said. “I just wrapped up almost 40 years of [teaching] undergrad in the Legal Studies Department, and Billy and I go back from the moment I hit campus. He welcomed me there. He’s a basketball coach then, and just a great guy from the start.”
It’s rare to see a basketball coach interact much with any professor, albeit an adjunct, but to build up a relationship that lasts over 40 years, that just goes to show the type of person Mecca is.
“Y’all have left your handprint on my heart and my soul,” said Mecca, holding a team-signed basketball. “Y’all matter to me, Quinnipiac matters to me. I don’t know why I feel like this is my school, I don’t know why I do. … For y’all who played for me, and for those who came back, thank you.”
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