Where are the Friars headed with a month left in the regular season?
Taking stock of the Friars on both the offensive and defensive end to this point of the season.
As injuries piled up for Providence this season, Friar fans were not only left speculating what this team would have looked like when fully healthy, but they missed out on the opportunity to learn more about their second-year head coach.
Beauty was somewhat in the eye of the beholder in Kim English’s first season at Providence. He retained key roster holdovers, saw important pieces follow him from George Mason, and righted the ship after Bryce Hopkins went down with a season-ending knee injury.
The Friars lost four-straight games without Hopkins to drop to 2-4 in league play, but behind outstanding seasons from Big East Player of the Year Devin Carter and center Josh Oduro, PC finished 10-10 in league play, won 21 games with six Quad 1 wins, and reached the Big East Tournament semifinals, but ultimately came up short of their goal of reaching the NCAA Tournament.
At season’s end, the general consensus was that English could coach defense (the Friars ranked 18th nationally in Defensive Efficiency), but there were questions about his offensive philosophy after Providence struggled to find consistency.
Detractors claim many coaches could have gotten to ten conference wins with Carter and Oduro, advocates note that Carter broke out under him, Oduro developed with him, and the roster had serious frontcourt holes after the loss of Hopkins.
Following last season, English and his staff set out to find spot up shooters that better fit their system, hoped to replace Oduro’s production by committee, and changed their stance on the offensive glass (the Friars vowed to attack the backboard).
We got just a glimpse of what this team would look like with Hopkins, and in the weeks that followed they lost Jabri Abdur-Rahim for the season after he started to find his footing, and they’ve been without Wesley Cardet Jr. for the past handful of games.
Saturday’s loss at Butler dropped Providence to 11-13 on the season, and 5-8 in league play. As has been the case throughout much of the year, they played well enough to give them a shot in the end, but they didn’t execute when they most needed it (PC is 1-6 in one-possession games).
Still, a season filled with what-ifs doesn’t mean we can’t evaluate what has taken place on the floor to date. Let’s start with the offense.
Shooters Found, but Turnover Issues and Interior Scoring Plague Providence
While the offense looked rough at times in November (hard to forget the Davidson game in which PC shot 10-37 inside the arc), the Friars turned into one of the best outside shooting teams in the country since the start of Big East play.
The Friars rank second in conference games in 3-point shooting, hitting at a 38.1% clip — that’s actually the 20th best mark in the country since league play began.
As well as Providence is shooting from deep, they aren’t taking an obscene amount of threes in Big East games: 24.6 3-point attempts ranks just outside of the top 100 nationally. PC was averaging 27.9 attempts from three in non-conference games, but they’ve generally scaled back a bit since a blowout loss to Marquette on Dec. 31.
Providence ranks in the 84th percentile on short jumpers (17 feet and in), 98th on mid-range shots (albeit on limited attempts), and in the 79th beyond the arc on the season.
PC is in the 85th percentile in spot-up scoring and the 93rd in isolation. They’ve made over 40% of their 3-pointers in six of their 13 conference games.
The challenge offensively has come in regard to the more physical aspects. Their 10.5 offensive rebounds per game in league play is nearly two more per game than last season, but last season they took 18.6 free throws and drew 16.7 fouls per game in Big East contests. This season they are taking 14.8 free throws (349th in the country) and drawing 13.2 fouls (363rd) in conference games.