Behind a stifling defense, and the continued ascent of Devin Carter, Providence dominates #6 Marquette in Kim English's Big East debut
Marquette entered Tuesday night’s matchup against Providence with a #6 ranking in the AP Poll, with both an offense and defense ranked in the top 20 nationally in efficiency. Shaka Smart’s group already owns wins over Kansas and UCLA, they crushed a Texas team ranked #12 at the time, and also won at #23 Illinois. They are the reigning Big East regular and conference tournament champions, and return the league’s defending Player of the Year in Tyler Kolek — a Rhode Island native hellbent on picking up his first victory in the building of the team he grew up cheering for… the team that overlooked him coming out of high school.
For the third consecutive season, Smart, Kolek, and the Golden Eagles left Providence disappointed. Only this year the game didn’t resemble the epic clashes that took place the past two seasons in the Amica Mutual Pavilion. No, Kim English’s debut served as more a statement to the rest of the Big East.
Behind a sterling defensive effort, Providence won 72-57 in a game in which the Fairs limited Marquette to 32% shooting from the field and a 4-20 mark beyond the 3-point line. PC led this one for 31 minutes, and never allowed Marquette to get within a single possession after taking a 40-29 advantage at halftime.
And while Marquette brought all of their credentials to Friartown, they didn’t have Devin Carter, the guard who continued his outstanding junior season by taking on the challenge of slowing Kolek on the defensive end, while scoring 22 points on a career high five made 3-pointers.
After Kolek scored the first seven points of the second half to cut the Friar advantage to five, Carter knocked down a significant three to give PC some breathing room. He later buried consecutive shots from beyond the arc to push PC ahead, 56-41. Following Carter’s threes, Garwey Dual tossed a ridiculous no-look pass to Bryce Hopkins for a dunk that brought the crowd to its feet in elation.
It was at over that point.
“I got a new career high in threes, so I was pretty confident tonight,” Carter said. “I give a lot of credit to my teammates though because they definitely told me to keep shooting, and they kept finding me when I was open.”
English shared after the win that Providence was originally going to start Jayden Pierre defensively out on Kolek, but his defensive stopper called an audible the afternoon prior to the game. Then, after Kolek got going early in the second half (Carter had been switched the Marquette scorer Kam Jones), Carter asked for the assignment once again.
“He did a great job,” English said of Carter’s effort guarding Kolek. “Truthfully, he scored a lot of buckets on our terms — shots we wanted him to take and he made them. Give him a ton of credit. Good players are going to get theirs most nights.”
Kolek started the night 3-3 from the field, but went 4-12 the rest of the way, finishing with 21 points, nine rebounds, and five assists.
If you hadn’t watched Tuesday’s game, it would be difficult to appreciate the play of Dual, who shot 0-4 from the field, but PC was a +25 with him on the floor. Dual had seven assists and zero turnovers, and his length (and that of his fellow Friars in the backcourt) was a significant reason why Marquette struggled to finish.
Marquette also left Ticket Gaines open one too many times from the corner. He entered this game shooting 9-11 on left corner threes and crushed Smart’s club on shots from the corner, finishing with 18 points on 5-10 from beyond the arc.
Apparently, Marquette missed the memo on leaving him open from his sweet spot.
“If I get some space and my teammates find me, it’s going up,” Gaines said.
Following the loss, Smart wondered aloud if his team didn’t have the right mindset heading into this one, “There’s a humility that you have to have coming into a place like this, and an environment like this — to understand that that’s the only way. I don’t care what number is next to your name, or what you’ve done in the past, or what anyone says you are individually as a player, if you don’t have that (humility) then you are not going to be as connected as you need to be, and we didn’t have that tonight. Again, Providence deserves a lot of credit because some of the things they did made us more disconnected.”
It’s hard to imagine Marquette wasn’t ready to go on Tuesday, not with Kolek clearly playing with an edge back home — jawing at the PC bench at one point, and chirping a bit with some fans at another.
For the second straight season in Providence, Smart questioned the officiating,“I did tell a couple of the officials that we gotta figure out how to call a game in the second half the same way it was called in the first half, and vice versa.”
Marquette shot 13 free throws in the second half after taking eight in the first. The Friars shot 16 in the second after taking 12 in the opening 20 minutes.
Ultimately, this one didn’t come down to officiating, or Kolek going off back home.
The story was the promising defense of the Friars holding up against perhaps the most lethal offensive unit in the Big East in Kim English’s debut.
“This league’s a beast. The good thing about opening up with a team as good as Marquette is that there’s no time wasted to really figure out where we are as a group,” English said afterwards. “I’m really proud of our guys for their effort. That was a really, really good basketball team, and a really good program that our guys played really well against and beat tonight.”