Friar Basketball Newsletter: Big East Preview and Predictions, Kadeem Batts on What He Learned from Ed Cooley, Key Takeaways as PC Wraps The Exhibition Schedule, Bryce Hopkins' New Home in Friartown
We’ve just about made it. This week marks our final one without college basketball until April.
Providence wrapped the exhibition portion of the schedule by overwhelming Assumption on Saturday at the Amica Mutual Pavilion, 106-69. Ed Cooley sounded pleased with his team’s ball movement in their three appearances in October, while noting there is certainly room to grow defensively. You can read about six key takeaways from Cooley following Saturday’s game, including how he thinks Clifton Moore and Devin Carter “both have incredible basketball intellect” and they are “going to be studs defensively.”
Cooley also touched on how this team has more ball handlers than in previous years, his thoughts on rolling out a bigger lineup, playing exhibition games at the AMP versus a closed scrimmage, and more.
In preparation for the upcoming season, we created a roster page with about a paragraph-long breakdown of every player on the 2022-23 Friars. This page includes highlights, their basketball histories, and what could be ahead for each player on the roster.
This week’s newsletter also features our annual Big East Preview and Predictions, forecasting league standings, all conference performers, the top ten most impactful freshmen, the five most impactful transfers, detailed stories on some of the most intriguing teams in the league, and more.
We are happy to welcome Billy Ricci as not only a podcast partner with the site, but now as a writing contributor as well. In his first article, Billy reflects on the home-and-home series with Kentucky that turned into a home-and-neutral court, and how Bryce Hopkins has shined in October.
You can also see highlights of Friar freshman Jayden Pierre from when his Long Island Lutheran team went up against a McDonald’s All American point guard in one game, and an Eastern powerhouse in another.
Lastly, Billy and I have been working hard to finalize the podcast series on the 2013-14 Big East Champion Friars. What I’m most excited about, personally, is how open the former players were in terms of their journeys and growth while they were at Providence.
Kadeem Batts was particularly candid, and in this clip he talks about the culture change from Keno Davis to Cooley, how he and Bryce Cotton grew into leaders during their time at PC, and how he learned to genuinely appreciate how Cooley helped him grow as a player and a man after he “clashed” with him early on.
I also want to give another plug for our Friar Fan Survey. We will share the results of the survey in our next newsletter.
I want to thank all of you who have supported our transition to Substack over the past 14 months, and for reading the site throughout the offseason. Your support of us, our new partnership with Billy Ricci and The Friar Podcast, and of course, the continued friendship and insight from Craig Leighton has really reinvigorated what we do here, and I can’t wait to cover this season.