Providence hosted fans, parents, alumni and friends at their end of season banquet for the 2016-17 men’s basketball team on Saturday night. The event was held at the Omni Hotel and featured a visit from recently available 2017 top-35 recruit Makai Ashton-Langfordand his family. This marks the third straight year that Providence has hosted a recruit the weekend of their annual postseason team banquet. Nigel Williams-Goss visited Providence during the end of season banquet in 2015 and Alpha Diallo attended the event last spring.
Here are the team awards:
Jimmy Walker Most Valuable Players: Kyron Cartwright and Rodney Bullock
John Zannini Coaches Award: Casey Woodring
Coca-Cola Most Promising Prospect: Kalif Young and Maliek White
Marvin Barnes Defensive Player of the Year: Alpha Diallo
Unsung Hero Award: Isaiah Jackson
Lenny Wilkens Hustle Award: Emmitt Holt
Ryan Gomes Most Improved Player: Jalen Lindsey
Thomas Ramos Academic Award: Tom Planek (3.74 GPA)
It’s been less than a week since the news broke that 2017 point guard Makai Ashton-Langford was re-opening his recruitment after comitting to UConn in September. Thursday was the first day coaches could hit the road and visit with recruits after the dead period that it put up around the Final Four and, predictably, Ed Cooley trekked up to Brewster Academy to visit with the top-35 point guard. Many Friar fans were getting manic over the fact that no news was coming out about a player who had Providence in his final two schools before choosing UConn but, Cooley left Brewster with an official visit date set for the Worcester native to come see the Providence campus. Adam Finkelstein tweeted out that Ashton-Langford will be on the Providence campus this weekend to take that official visit. Finkelstein also broke the news of Ashton-Langford requesting his release from UConn last week.
The calendar has turned to April and with last night’s result in the books it’s officially the offseason in college basketball for all 351 schools. The coaching carousel is in full swing and the recruiting wire is buzzing with de-commitments, re-commitments, transfers and more. Providence has had great success these last 4 years and I’ve been lucky enough to cover the team for the last 3. Before I get any further into this post I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to everyone that has visited the site, tweeted, emailed, messaged or discussed Providence hoops at a bar with me these last 1,170 days since pcbb1917.com went live back on January 21, 2014. There have been more than 1.24 million views here since then and I think that’s pretty cool for a fanbase of a small Catholic school in Rhode Island.
The latest episode of the Providence College podcast features Ed Cooley. Host Matt Chittim and Cooley discuss the importance of having a supportive administration, how he and his staff target recruits and Cooley gives his opinion on hardest worker, best athlete, most improved, best defender, best shooter and who would win in a 1 on 1 game of walk-ons.
The rumor mill had been buzzing that 2017 point guard Makai Ashton-Langford was considering re-opening his recruitment after signing a binding National Letter of Intent with UConn in November. On Friday, it became a reality. ESPN.com’s Adam Finkelstein reportedthat the top-40 recruit out of Brewster Academy was in fact asking UConn to be released from his NLI. The rumor mill began it’s buzzing after Glen Miller, longtime assistant coach and lead recruiter for Ashton-Langford for the Huskies, left the program last week. A reportby Gavin Keefe of The Day indicated Miller was asked to leave. UConn is now looking at the possibility of losing one of their prized 2017 recruits in Ashton-Langford and two current players, Vance Jackson and Steven Enoch, to transfer since the news of Miller’s departure.
Providence now has their second offseason departure with the news that sophomore guard Ricky Council II will transfer, he announced on his Instagram page. The North Carolina native spent two seasons at Providence with very limited minutes. In 19 career games at Providence, Council averaged 0.9 points/game and 0.5 rebounds/game in 3.5 minutes/game. Council came to Providence after doing a post-graduate year at Moravian Prep and was billed as a shooter and scorer. His best game at Providence was in November of his freshman year when he scored 5 points in 9 minutes in a blowout win over Brown.
pcbb1917.com - Providence College Basketball 