The Hopkins Sized Elephant in the Room

361 days since Hopkins ACL Tear, what can fans expect from the Friars superstar going forward

Before we get started, let me just say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you in Friartown. I think we all acknowledge this season has been far below expectations, but I’m confident that there is no better fanbase in the country, and that we will see better days on the basketball court sooner versus later. I appreciate every one of you who reads, comments, shares and agrees with all my takes. I even appreciate those of you who disagree vehemently! At the end of the day we’re all gunning for the same goal, it’s all love.

Now that the holiday cheer is out of the way there’s something that’s been on my mind over the Christmas break; when will we see Bryce Hopkins suit up in a Providence uniform again? Best case scenario, he returns Tuesday night against #8 Marquette. Some of Hopkins’ best games of his career have come against the Golden Eagles, and man could the Friars (and their head coach) use a vintage performance from their best player to pull off an upset that quite frankly nobody sees coming.

The worst case scenario is that we’ve already seen him suit up for the Friars for the last time. Read that again. That is not a typo. I don’t think that scenario will happen, but I do think it’s possible. What I do expect to happen is that the rest of this season unfolds with a continuous cloud of uncertainty surrounding Hopkins’ status each game. My guess is that he’ll effectively be a game time decision for each of Providence’s remaining 20 games this season. He’ll play in some, he’ll miss some.

Now, before we go any further I want to make one thing crystal clear. I’m not blaming Bryce Hopkins for the reality of this situation, nor am I blaming his camp. I’m not even really blaming Kim English (we’ll get to that in a bit). He of course has to have his players back, and some of the decision making around Bryce’s availability is likely out of his hands. It’s a very tricky situation in the age of NIL, collegiate free agency aka the transfer portal and agents representing college players. There are clearly competing interests at play here, with Bryce’s short term health the rightful priority of him and his team, and winning basketball games being the top priority of Kim English & Co. I don’t think it makes you a bad fan, or an insensitive one, to point out these competing interests and how it may have had an impact on what we’ve seen on the court this season. I actually think it makes you a good fan. One who is able to critically look at the situation in front of us and not be relegated to simply being a cheerleader. Again, nobody is to blame here, the Hopkins situation is just an unfortunate reality in a season full of them for the Friars. Let’s take a look at how we got here:

January 3, 2024:

Hopkins tears his ACL against Seton Hall. You all remember this, I don’t need to remind you.

~January 17, 2024:

Although Hopkins tore his ACL on January 3rd, he didn’t actually undergo surgery until two weeks later in his hometown of Chicago. Hopkins later said that the doctors gave him a 6-8 month timeline for recovery, although the usual recovery timeline is more like 8-10 months. This means best case (realistic) scenario, Bryce would have been ready to go in late September, with a more realistic timeline being late November. There are real questions to ask of the head coach about why this roster was constructed entirely around a player coming back from a devastating injury (where the timeline to being 100% is of course going to be fluid!), but we’ll save that for another time.

October 10, 2024:

Fast forward to the lead up to this season, when national college basketball reporter Andy Katz visited Friartown for a preseason round of interviews. Katz spoke with both Hopkins and English and while the Bryce interview didn’t really reveal anything newsworthy, this was the first time English gave a glimpse into what the potential timeline for 23’s return might look like.

“Soon.” English said, “He’ll go live in practice at the start of the season… his first game back will definitely be a home game.”

This would not be the first time Friartown would hear the ‘soon’ timeline given.

November 24th, 2024:

Now here’s where things get interesting. After the Friars survived their first 5 games of season against inferior opponents, all eyes turned to the Battle 4 Atlantis which was set to give the team a proper test. We also got breaking news a few days before the tournament kicked off from Big East Insider John Fanta that Bryce was set to return in the Bahamas.

I was also skeptical of this report for two reasons. First, it goes directly against what the head coach said in October that Bryce’s first game would be a home game. Second, the Battle 4 Atlantis is played on a makeshift basketball court in a glorified ballroom in the Bahamas. Not exactly the optimal setting for a player returning from a torn ACL.

However, I can promise you John Fanta did not make this report up. He got it leaked from somewhere, from someone with privileged knowledge of what was going on with Hopkins return timeline. I have no idea who leaked this but it makes zero sense for someone from Hopkins’ camp to have done so. This report put crazy amounts of (unnecessary) pressure and expectation on Hopkins to return. Why would anyone from Bryce’s world have done that?

November 27th, 2024:

3 days later, 4 hours before Providence tipped off with Oklahoma, Fanta’s report was walked back (and later Fanta’s Field of 68 colleague Jeff Goodman). The Friars would proceed to go 0-3 in Atlantis, including a putrid performance against a lowly Davidson team.

This is when things started to feel like they were spiraling a bit. Maybe Bryce really was going to return in the Bahamas and suffered a setback in the preceding 48 hours. Maybe Fanta got bad information and Bryce was never going to play in Atlantis. Maybe someone with the Program leaked it prematurely without fully consulting Hopkins and those looking out for him. We’ll never know but it smelt a bit fishy in the moment and seems even stranger now. For what it’s worth, Kim English was asked repeatedly about Hopkins’ timeline for return in the Bahamas and each time responded with some variation of “he’s close”.

December 3, 2024:

11 months to the day since tearing his ACL, Hopkins made his return. It was glorious. Providence put up their best performance of the Kim English era, utterly dominating a talented BYU team from the jump. Hopkins finished with 16 points (3-6 FG, 10-12 FT, 0-1 3PT), 5 rebounds and 4 assists while providing the spacing to open up the floor for his teammates Jabri Abdur-Rahim and Rich Barron to have great nights as well.

This was a damn fun night, but perhaps the most telling part came in English’s postgame press conference.

There’s a few great quotes in here that shed some light on the behind the scenes goings on of Hopkins’ availability. I’ve highlighted a few below with timestamps corresponding timestamps:

9:13; Q: When did you know you were going to have Bryce [available] ?

A: “Sunday after practice. [Hopkins] felt good. He wanted to know what we’d do Monday and I told him we’d get up and down, but Sunday night he told me he was good.”

13:20; Q: How much different is your team with Bryce out there?

A: “I mean he’s great, and we built the team around him. Our team makes more sense with him out there, when we can get a really good 4 shooter lineup out there. He makes the right decisions… our team makes more sense.”

13:50; Q: You said he was going to be on a minutes restriction, is 26 minutes for Hopkins about the right number?

A: “[He played] 25 minutes 34 seconds, that’s about 5 minutes 34 seconds more than we wanted… but I checked with him and Chris Hagerman, and those guys deserve a ton of credit. Chris Hagerman, his surgeon in Chicago, his PT’s, the team around him that work with him everyday to get him to full strength deserve a ton of credit… [Bryce] is strong. His numbers now, his flexion in his hamstring, his knees are strong than they were when he was at full strength last December.”

14:50; Q: How closely will you monitor Hopkins going forward?

A: “Always. We’ll visit with him now, we’ll put a plan together, we’ll monitor his reps in practice to get him back to full strength.”

17:15: Q: With Bryce you had to be patient with the process, take us back to how challenging that may have been.

A: “He wanted to play. I wanted to make sure he was right and everything was right. I’m happy he didn’t play in the Bahamas… he might’ve had a bad game, who knows. It’s on God’s timing and nobody else’s. If anyone thinks we are listening to anyone outside of what our program has to do for our players you’ve lost your mind. Rushing a kid back we ain’t doing that.”

December 10th, 2024: