Friar Basketball Newsletter: Noah Horchler's great start, Quante Berry and Christ Essandoko shine, Brycen Goodine earns more PT, previewing the upcoming week, highlights, pressers, and more
A busy week for the Friars (and two of their 2022 commitments — more on that later) resulted in a pair of wins over Northwestern and St. Peter’s wrapped around a loss to Virginia.
Now 6-1, Providence prepares for a massive week ahead, as they welcome Texas Tech and URI to the Dunkin Donuts Center. Former head coach Chris Beard left Tech for Texas last offseason, and has been replaced by Beard’s former assistant, Mark Adams. Adams has a tremendously talented roster that will get its first real test of the season when they play PC on Wednesday night.
The Friars and URI reengage for the first time in two years, after the rivalry game was cancelled last season. It’s always spicy when Providence and Rhode Island meet, but there were some hard feelings over last season’s cancellation that could add a little juice.
Providence hopes to return to some semblance of health this week after Brycen Goodine and Justin Minaya missed the St. Peter’s game with illnesses — a game in which point guard Jared Bynum left with an injury of his own. It was disappointing to see Goodine miss the St. Peter’s game because he was earning more minutes after a great shooting night in the win over Northwestern.
This past week was also a busy one for Quante Berry and Christ Essandoko. The teammates at Winston-Salem Christian (and Friar signees) each had big performances at the Kevin Brown Memorial Tournament. Essandoko kicked things off with a 21 point, 18 rebound, six assist, six block effort before Berry went for 32 two days later. Berry scored 21 of his 32 points in the first half, and played as well as I’d seen him play. Subscribers can read impressions from those two games, as well as more about other prospects Winston-Salem Christian went up against this past week. One of those players was Hansel Emmanuel, who has earned D1 scholarship offers, despite losing his arm in an accident as a child. Emmanuel is a tremendous athlete and fascinating to watch.
This week’s News and Notes column delves into Noah Horchler’s great start to the season, highlighted by a 25 point, 11 rebound, five assist effort on Saturday. Horchler’s shooting numbers are way up this year, thanks in large part to a spike in shooting from inside the 3-point arc. This article includes a lot of advanced numbers for the Friars to date, a peek at some Big East players who are impressing so far, and more.
Finally, we also have highlights from the wins over Northwestern and St. Peter’s, as well as Ed Cooley’s press conference following the St. Peter’s win — the 200th of Cooley’s career. He got emotional when win 200 was mentioned after the game.
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