Friar Basketball Newsletter: Behind Providence's Offensive Struggles at Nova, a Recruiting Roundup, plus News and Notes
The numbers speak for themselves in regard to Providence’s offensive shortcomings against Villanova on Sunday night. The Friars shot 4-24 from the field, 2-16 from beyond the 3-point arc, and had nine turnovers in an opening half that saw them put just 16 points up on the board.
Somehow, Providence trailed by just six with a minute to play in the first half, but Nova closed by scoring four consecutive points, and then ran off eight straight out of the break (behind a pair of 3-pointers from Tyler Burton) to put this game out of reach early at 34-16.
The Friars had rallied from similar deficits at Creighton and St. John’s in January, but that wasn’t happening on this night — not with an offense that ended the night with a 29% shooting mark from the field and 50 points for the game.
Villanova ended its five-game losing streak with a 68-50 victory that left PC head coach Kim English disgusted with his team’s offensive execution.
“Just a piss poor performance for us — the most embarrassing performance I’ve been a part of since I’ve been in basketball,” English said afterwards. “Honestly, it starts with me. I didn’t have our guys prepared to compete at the level which is needed to win a game at this juncture of the season.”
The first-half woes had this writer looking at PC’s lowest scoring outputs of the past 25 years — a group of teams that last night’s Friars narrowly avoided joining, thanks to a 34-point second half and perfect 13-13 shooting at the free throw line. (Somewhat notably, three of these teams reached the NCAA Tournament):
Since English took the Providence job last spring, he espoused the virtues of a free-flowing offense and trusting his players to make the most of the offensive freedom he was giving them. It sounds like those days are coming to an end for this bunch.
“This team has shown me enough that we’re not ready for that type of freedom offensively, so we’ll rein it in. We’re going to run set plays to get the ball exactly where we want it, to get the exact shot that we want. This team doesn’t deserve the freedom that they have, and they’ve now lost it. First comes discipline, then comes freedom,” English said. “It’s been kind of the other way around, so we’ll rein it in and correct that.”
English spoke of the stark contrast between his team’s understanding of how to keep opponents from getting good looks and its inability to recognize them on the other end.
“It’s sickening our poor shot quality on offense, but we will correct that.”
Providence knows what they will get from Josh Oduro (18 points, 12 rebounds last night) and Devin Carter (17/5/4 while playing through a bad hip) on a nightly basis, but roster spots three through the end of the rotation have been inconsistent.
And that shouldn’t be a massive surprise.
The Friars have a pair of young point guards learning on the job and, obviously, took a huge hit when Bryce Hopkins went down for the season. Yet, they also lost considerable depth last offseason after Alyn Breed was suspended and then left school (how helpful would a four-year Big East contributor be in this backcourt right now?), Justin Fernandez injured his knee (the Friars could certainly use a downhill driver at 6’5 with range beyond the arc), and Will McNair up and left in September (the frontcourt is small and inexperienced beyond Oduro, and PC often gets blitzed on the glass post-Hopkins).
In a college basketball world of rosters with seemingly less depth, but far more experience thanks to post-covid eligibility, losing four of the top ten players from your projected roster is a significant blow, and it’s a factor in Providence’s offensive struggles this season — but not an excuse for the extent to which PC stalled on Sunday.
The Friars were outscored 28-0 in bench points, had only four players score a point, and watched Nova take a 21-4 edge in points off of turnovers.
Sixty four percent of Providence’s shots came from beyond the 3-point arc on Sunday — setting a high since Ken Pomeroy started tracking that figure around 25 years ago. Four of the top ten highest marks for the program in Three-Point Rate have come this season, with mixed results. The win over Marquette was terrific, but the second half against Xavier and all of last night were ugly.
“We just have to grow up,” English said bluntly. “Our body language, our communication, our acceptance of coaching, it has to be better.”
“It rears its ugly head when there’s adversity.”
English certainly sounded like he was ready to challenge his team in the two days they have to prepare for Creighton, who comes to the Amica Mutual Pavilion on Wednesday. For as ugly as Sunday was, the Friars (5-6) are still just two games back of Creighton for third in the league, and part of a five-team cluster of Big East clubs with either a 6-5 or 5-6 mark in league play.
Panic over the offense wasn’t setting in when they won three straight league games prior to last week, or when they played #1 UConn tight to the final buzzer on Wednesday, but the offense had English fuming in his postgame press conference on Sunday night.
The Creighton game will be interesting to see the extent to which the Friar offense changes. Providence remains one of the top ten defenses in the country, and they have a month left to try to piece together the type of offensive consistency that has eluded them all year.
Also on Friar Basketball this week, subscribers can read a recruiting roundup, as well as our News and Notes column. The recruiting roundup includes a look at a big weekend for PC’s top big man commit, as well as the action from the National Prep School Invitational.
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