Providence Friars basketball coach Tim Welsh paced the sideline during Saturday's game against Notre Dame. As his team was starting to lose its grip over the Irish, something must have caught his attention and distracted him, possibly even stirred up some anger. Was somebody chanting his home phone number?

What is this heckling scourge that inflicts itself upon Notre Dame's opponents, that messes with their minds and gets in their face?

It is a "Green Monster" of sorts that has the potential to terrorize its enemies. Some, including Notre Dame men's basketball head coach Mike Brey, say that it contributes eight to ten points per game. Numbering 200 strong, these are the self-proclaimed promoters of Fighting Irish spirit, and saviors to the basketball team.

This is the Leprechaun Legion.

Call it a carbon copy of Duke University's Cameron Crazies or Gonzaga University's Kennel Club and the legionnaires may have some invective to shout at you. This is different; the Leprechaun Legion is based on Notre Dame's tradition, clarifying the "fight" in Fighting Irish.

Founded by Zahm Hall senior Robert Paznorik, junior Nick Iaria and freshmen Joe Hettler, Drew Updike, Erik Tarnowski, Brian Logan and Matt O'Connell, the Legion was conceived last December as a way to increase the enthusiasm of the student body at Notre Dame basketball games in order to help out the Irish on the court.

The Legion serves as a cheering and jeering section, encouraging the Irish and blasting their opponents with startling and sometimes sensitive remarks that have a tendency to grab attention.

"When a player's listening to me and not his coach, when we're in the back of his mind, his head's not in the game," Paznorik, the Legion's president, said. "If we cause one bad pass, one missed free throw, we've done our job. We want the most hostile court environment."

According to Paznorik, the Legion is organized like a company, where each member has his or her own responsibility.

Paznorik made a distinction between the Legion and other campus organizations: "Everyone's really involved. The majority are really dedicated."

Additionally, the Legion is organized into committees: Digging and Sloganry, Signs and Ballyhoo, Public Relations and Human Resources.

If an opposing player is on the bench and hasn't played much or at all, the Legion will start chanting "Rudy." Paznorik said this bitterly sarcastic cheer will sometimes cause the player to nudge himself toward the coach, wanting to get into the game, possibly inspired by the resounding, familiar chant from the stands. But alas, the coach doesn't respond.

"We like to find out parents' names," Paznorik said. Armed with this information, the legion sometime heckles an opposing player's parents when they stand up to cheer on their son, shouting things like, "Jim and Judy, shut up and sit down."

During the game against West Virginia, the Legion noticed a 7'2" player who looked like Lurch from "The Adams Family," so the group encouraged the student body to sing the theme song from the television show.

The response from the Irish basketball team to the Legion has been positive. In addition to Brey's comments, several players have shown an interest in the green-clad cheering section that occupies the first rows of the student section.

"[Irish players] will ask what we have for the next game the day before the game," Paznorik said.

The ushers at the Joyce Center have welcomed the Legion, surprising as it may seem to some.

"The ushers are cool," Iaria, chair of the Human Resources committee, said. "On the [online] message boards, people get upset with ushers. But we love them."

During one game, an opposing team's water boy wanted a Jeer Card, the flyer which lists all of the slogans and insults as a reference guide for the student body and other Irish fans.

"You know you're doing well when that happens," Updike said.

A few visiting players have mumbled expletives, but on many occasions, they tried to hide their laughter as their teammates are derided on the court.

"We're out to find everything we can," Paznorik said. "We want them to be surprised. We want them to be shocked. We want them to miss shots."

One of Paznorik's favorite responses came from Kentucky guard Adam Chiles.

"It seems that Adam was drunk one night and started making phone calls to cute girls on campus," Paznorik said. "He was apparently quite unsmooth: the ladies started calling him "Bigalo," as in "Deuce Bigalo, Male Gigolo," the male prostitute played by Rob Schnieder in the movie of the same name."

During Kentucky's pre-game warm-ups, Paznorik shouted out, "Where's the Ladies' Man? Is Bigalo here today? Where's Adam?"

Chiles' teammates seemed to enjoy this, as evidenced by their grinning and chuckling as they warmed up.

"Adam didn't think it was so funny," Paznorik said. "He came strolling up to us from the bench, stood about a foot away from my face and said, `Man, you got somethin' to say to me?' This was actually pretty funny, because he's a little shorter than I am."

The Legion proceeded to fire back some of Chiles' "wretched statistics" for the season.

"We asked him if Tubby [Smith, Kentucky's head coach] had pulled him from the scrub team yet, what it was like to wash his teammates' uniforms and whether he'd heard any good pick-up lines lately," Paznorik said. "This just plain didn't amuse him, but again, his teammates were going nuts. One even had to stop shooting so he could sit down on the bench and catch his breath."

Another Kentucky player came over to calm him down.

"You just watch what you say," Chiles sneered as he was escorted back to the bench.

"You just keep your head in the game," shouted a legionnaire.

"Adam was ours for the rest of the day," Paznorik said.

The only negative response from the Notre Dame community came from a sophomore who wrote into The Observer criticizing the Legion for making fun of a Georgetown player because of his weight problem.

According to Paznorik, the Legion will not shout just anything and they take steps to ensure that their comments are not too hurtful.

"There is a line we will not cross," Paznorik said. "We won't make fun of anyone based on race, ethnicity or religion."

Other areas, though, seem to be open to jeering. Paznorik said that most issues, such as illegitimate children, are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, as investigated by a special section of the Legion.

At 10 p.m. on Wednesday in the Debartolo Hall computer cluster, most students were merely doing schoolwork, but a handful was diligently working on a task of great importance. They were doing CIA-level work with a "National Enquirer" attitude.

This was a meeting of the Digging and Sloganry Committee of the Leprechaun Legion, the group whose responsibility is to find out all the dirty secrets and embarrassing moments of the players on whatever team the Irish basketball squad faces.

These facts, such as accounts of illegitimate children, are then used as jeers and nicknames to shout at the opposing players during games.

"We probably know more about them than their teammates," freshman Drew Updike, the chair of the committee, said.

The Digging and Sloganry Committee employs every resource it can in order to dig up obscure, usually embarrassing, information on members of the opposing team.

Resources such as anti-school websites and online message boards are key to this process, but the committee's most reliable and often most interesting,sources are friends and relatives at Big East schools, people who have seen players cheat, who have seen what players do at parties, who have seen a player steal (and that's not on the basketball court). The committee claims to find out everything about players, from dogs' and parents' names to histories of old hook-ups.

While the members gathered around computers in Debartolo Hall, surfing various Web sites, a cell phone rang — a tipster. Updike left the room to talk to the caller in private. He returned with great enthusiasm, believing he had found some quality dirt.

Dirt that could potentially help to change the tide of Saturday's game against Providence, spelling victory for Notre Dame.

Once Updike announced how he learned that Providence guard Sheiku Kabba cheated on his Western Civilization test, the other legionnaires got excited and began devising jeers to bring before the Legion's consideration.

Just as the last engineers left Cushing Hall for the weekend, students wearing green tee shirts filed into room 303 for the General Meeting of the Leprechaun Legion: a gathering that members seem to view with as much importance as a General Assembly of the United Nations.

This was when the Digging and Sloganry Committee presented its ideas for jeers to the entire Legion.

Only a dozen members were present as Updike opened the meeting. They began with the first player on Providence's roster: forward Ryan Gomes.

"It took him more than one try to pass the SAT for eligibility," Updike said.

"I like SAT," another member said.

"I think it will get to him more."

"Yeah, that's embarrassing."

"But he probably doesn't care about his SAT score."

An argument ensued, so Updike moved along to the next item, or, perhaps more appropriately, victim: guard Abdul Mills.

"He missed a championship because of a groin injury. It wasn't cancerous, so don't worry. We're not going to be making fun of something bad," Updike said.

"Can we just have everyone go, `Ow my groin'?" asked one member.

Pazornik then entered and took charge.

"Let's move right along to our friend John Linehan," Pazornik said.

"He's a senior and he's only 5'9. Most of you guys are probably taller than him," Updike said.

"I'm taller than you, I'm taller than you," someone chanted, hoping his idea had potential as a jeer.

"I like `stand up.'"

"What about `get off your knees?'"

Everyone began to offer his or her own idea somewhat chaotically until a member who had just entered raised his hand.

"We've gone too far," he said. "Gome's nickname should not be SAT."

"SAT's horrible!" said another member.

"Is he going to know we're talking about the SAT? I mean, who cares? He plays basketball."

"He probably didn't even know that was the SAT he was taking," said another legionnaire as the room erupted into laughter.

The group proceeds to guard Kareem Hayletts. When one of his teammate's fake IDs was rejected at a club, Hayletts went to the bouncer's house with a few of his friends and beat him up. He was later charged with felony assault.

"Kill the bouncer," someone said.

"Why not `beat'?" said another. "They didn't kill him."

A show of hands overruled her and "kill the bouncer" it was.

Once the business was completed and all the nicknames and slogans had been settled upon, the Legion closed the meeting with a triumphant shout of "Amen! Hallelujah!"

Then many of them rushed out.

"I left work at the dinning hall to attend [this meeting]," said a member, hoping she would not be fired.

Approximately nine hours after the meeting, at 1:55 a.m. on Saturday of the Providence game, two legionnaires, one of them dressed as a leprechaun, headed for the Joyce Center.

Freshmen Jenny Scherer and Nick Dobertin wanted to ensure that they were first in line when the gates opened 13 hours later, despite that fact that the rest of the student body would not get to the JACC until 30 minutes before tip-off.

As the doors to the building were locked, the pair slept outside in the bitter wind, cold and snow.

Finally, after a freezing night, they were allowed in the lobby of Gate 11 at 7 a.m.

"They killed my streak," said Iaria, who was previously the first one to every game.

He said it was very important that they were allowed to wait inside once the JACC opened in the morning. "If we were out in the snow, most people probably wouldn't be here," Iaria said.

Laurie Privitera arrived at 8 a.m. When asked why she joined the Legion, Privitera said, "It's the beginning of tradition, a lot of fun. It's good to get involved."

She also enjoys the time spent waiting for the game at the JACC. "We sleep, hang out, have fun with people, get to meet people," Privitera said.

Once the gates of the JACC were opened on Saturday, the Legionnaires hurried towards the front rows of the student section, where they began their pre-game preparations.

Members passed out the Jeer Cards and distributed copies of The Observer for fans to hold up while the Providence Friar's starting line-up was announced as a show of disrespect.

The insults began as soon as the players took the court.

"Didn't you guys lose to West Virginia?"

"Hey, Anderson, that's a pretty cool tattoo."

"Maybe your ugly sister loves you, but you mother definitely doesn't."

The ushers laughed all the while, but when asked to comment on the Legion, they had to keep quiet.

A legionnaire sporting an Irish Elvis costume was not pleased with the energy of the crowd. "How come we aren't heckling, guys?" he shouted.

Throughout the course of the game, the Legion continued to do their best to tick off the Friars.

For forward Christopher Anrin, a native of Switzerland, the Legion shouted "Belarus," as Belarus beat the Swedish national hockey team in the Olympics and Anrin was quoted as saying "I love Swedish national hockey."

The Legion does not always shout in unison. Often it is a crowd of hecklers shouting out angry and humorous insults

When Irish guard Chris Thomas lodged the ball between the rim and the backboard and Friar forward Tuuka Kotti failed to knock it down, the Legion erupted into laughter.

"I think [the Legion] is pretty cool," Jackie Addesso, a non-member, said. "I think all the students take part in it. It provides a sense of unity."

The Legion has received attention and praise from newspapers, Notre Dame alumni and even from Dick Vitale.

The members take a pride in what they do and what they feel they have contributed to Irish basketball, but many still feel they have more work to do in encouraging the student body to be more enthusiastic during games.

"[Contributing to the game] is something we really do take pride in," freshman legionnaire Garrett Kuk said. "These guys, [the basketball team], we're living next door to them, going to class with them. It's part of that larger teamwork."

• Cheers and jeers from the stands