24 Hour Rule: Providence 73 St John's 75

No Moral Victories.

I am not in the moral victories business. Never have been, never will be. The objective of each game is to win, not lose close, not make it an interesting game, not to stage a valiant comeback. To win, that is the only reason. The Friars haven’t been very good at that over the past week, having dropped 3 in a row since Bryce Hopkins went down for the season. The glass half empty view is that the Friars are a Thad Motta mental mistake, not fouling up 3 with 7 seconds left, away from having dropped 4 in a row with the season on the brink (don’t worry we’ll get to glass half full later). There were plenty of opportunities to win this game after getting down 9-0 to begin the game and 20-5 after the first 7 minutes. You take out that abhorrent start and we may be looking at a different result. That slow start is squarely on Kim English not having his guys ready to go. The cold hard truth is the Friars aren’t talented enough anymore to spot teams 9 points, there are not talented enough to go 11/21 from the free throw line, or give up 10 offensive rebounds, and still win the game. But we’ll get to all that.

Play of the Game:

You can of course point to the offensive rebound that the team (namely Ticket Gaines) gave up with 7 seconds left. You could point to Gaines’ missed layup with 1:14 left that would’ve cut the score to a single possession game, but for me the play of the game occurred much earlier than that, a Daniss Jenkins corner 3 to cap a 13-2 second half run by the Johnnies and push the lead back up to 10 after the Friars had finally clawed all the way back to lead by 1. Needless to say the Friars never took the lead again. I thought Kim English’s use of timeouts was very poor here, and he could’ve stopped this run well before it swelled to 13-2. After the Oklahoma game one of the things English said was that learning how to deploy timeouts after his team came back from a big deficit was one of the key takeaways he would carry from that game. Guess not.

Team Analysis:

The Bad:

The Depth: The trio of Corey Floyd Jr., Rafael Castro and Rich Barron combined to play 23 minutes. In those 23 minutes this was their combined stat line:

• 2 points (1/6 FG, 0/2 3 PT), 4 rebounds, 0 assists, 1 steal, 3 turnovers

I actually thought Castro was OK this game, he’s just not talented (or physical) enough to go up against Joel Soriano. But he made a few plays, didn’t turn it over himself, and was generally fine. For those of you expecting him to be an offensive threat and a consistent post up presence, I’m not sure what to tell you anymore. This was actually a B / B+ Castro game all things considered. Barron was unremarkable. Didn’t do much in his limited run. As for CFJ that was the worst game I’ve seen him play in a Providence uniform. He was a net -17 in his 10 minutes with 0 points and 3 turnovers. His most noteworthy play was actually getting T’d up for throwing the ball at Chris Ledlum. Not ideal. There’s been a loud clamor for Garwey Dual to replace him in the starting lineup but I don’t think that actually solves anything. Dual played 33 minutes against St. John’s, CFJ played 10. The reality is that the Friars are a man short. They have 5 reliable, consistently productive players and even that sometimes is a stretch. You can’t play em all 40 minutes. The Friars miss Bryce Hopkins. And Alyn Breed. And Will McNair Jr. Ugh. Let’s move on.

Free Throw Shooting:

I’m not really sure what else there is to say about this but I will suck it up and write the words anyway. The Friars threw this game away at the free throw line. 11/21 is completely unacceptable and harks back to the darkest days of Ed Cooley’s teams. Even the normally automatic Jayden Pierre finally missed a few on Wednesday night. I don’t know if this is on the coaches or the players so I’ll blame em both.

Just think about how bad that is for a second. Your Providence Friars ranks 282nd out of 351 division 1 college basketball teams in free throw percentage. We’ve been saying since November it would cost them a game and it finally did (though I’d argue it cost them the Kansas State game too).

The Good:

Limiting Turnovers:

The Friars only had 9 turnovers all game and only had 1 in the second half. They played an extremely clean final 20 minutes which got them back in the game. Very difficult to win (or even compete) when you’re constantly handing the ball over to the other team, but they got it cleaned up at halftime. Have to give a lot of credit to Jayden Pierre here who played by far his cleanest game of the season, with 5 assists to only 1 turnovers. Providence isn’t good enough anymore to get away with the sloppy turnovers that have plagued them at times. The magic number seems to be around 12. Give away more than 12 possession and the Friars are in trouble, less than that and they’ll always have a chance.

Player Breakdown:

Editor’s Note: Players need to log more than 12 minutes to qualify for the breakdown section - vs St John’s this disqualifies Corey Floyd Jr (10 mins), Rafael Castro (8 mins) and Rich Barron (5 mins):

Devin Carter: This was the best game I have seen Devin Carter play since he stepped foot in Friartown. He was superb with a career high 31 points (11/19 FG, 7/12 FT, 2/6 3PT), 13 rebounds, 4 steals and 2 assists. If I’m nitpicking the free throw numbers are a bit concerning (66.1% on the year) given he gets to the line so often, but he is the frontrunner for the Big East player of the year, will be playing in the NBA next year, and is finally getting the All American attention from the national media that he deserved.

Now if only the Friars could find him a running mate, we might be in business.

Josh Oduro: