Friar Basketball Newsletter: Behind Nate Watson, PC bounces back against St. John's, reflecting on Ed Cooley's impact at Providence, an intriguing matchup in the middle in Omaha, and much more
Providence bounced back from their worst performance of the season at Marquette with an 83-73 victory over St. John’s on Saturday afternoon. The Friars remain without AJ Reeves, who is sidelined with a fractured finger, and it was Nate Watson picking up the slack on Saturday by scoring 18 of his team-high 22 points in the second half versus the Johnnies.
With the victory, Providence improved to 14-2 on the season, and 4-1 in the Big East. Saturday also marked Ed Cooley’s 300th career win.
You can see highlights from the second half here. PC out-scored St. John’s 48-35 in the second half, and shot 59% over the final 20 minutes. Once again, point guard Jared Bynum was terrific running the show (18 points, 8-9 from the free throw line), while Justin Minaya knocked down a pair of critical 3-pointers over the final ten minutes of the game.
Friar fans can read all about Watson’s second half takeover and Bynum’s clutch plays, see Cooley’s emotional reaction over winning his 300th game, and watch clips of how St. John’s star Julian Champagnie was limited to 5-19 shooting from the field.
With Cooley winning his 300th game, we take a look back at some of the events that led to him taking over as Providence’s coach 11 years ago. This includes being turned down for the head coaching gigs at Boston College and Stonehill. This article details the tremendous work Cooley has done at Providence for the past decade plus.
This week’s News and Notes column details just how good Providence has been coming out of timeouts this year (spoiler alert: elite) on both sides of the ball — a testament to good coaching and veterans who can execute. Among the ten topics covered this week are the effectiveness and frequency with which Providence is using their zone defense, where a pair of 2022 PC commits rank in one service’s North Carolina rankings, the highest usage players in the Big East this season, Ben Bentil’s newest landing spot, Texas Tech doing damage, Marquette suddenly rolling, and much more.
Lastly, Big East fans are in for a treat when Creighton and PC take to the floor in Omaha on Tuesday night (9pm, FS1/WPRO), as the game will feature two very good big men when Watson and the Jays’ 7’1 sophomore Ryan Kalkbrenner go head-to-head. This article looks at Kalkbrenner’s recruitment, how he has emerged on a young Creighton team, and provides a “tale of the tape” between Watson and Kalkbrenner by the numbers.
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