Ben Bentil has been on the Big East Weekly Honor Roll twice this season, but he has now moved up the list and was named Big East Player of the Week on Monday. Bentil had a career-high 32 points in Providence’s lone game last week at UMass. The Providence sophomore also had 12 rebounds, marking his 3rd double-double of the season. Bentil is currently leading the league in scoring (18.8 points/game) and is 6th in rebounding (8.0 rebounds/game). He is having a breakout season alongside Kris Dunn and is arguably as big a reason for Providence’s 12-1 start and top 10 national ranking as Dunn at this point in the season. Bentil winning this award snaps a 3 week streak of Butler players taking home the weekly honor.
Freshman sharpshooter Ryan Fazekas started the first 9 games of his career at Providence before missing the Friars’ December 9th contest against Boston College due to a bout of mononucleosis. The Indiana native had been back at home recovering with his family for the last two weeks or so and Kevin McNamara of the Providence Journal reported on Twitter that Ed Cooley will again be without Fazekas for Providence’s Big East opener on December 31st at Butler.
Ben Bentil has landed on the Big East’s Weekly Honor Roll of players that had good weeks, but not good enough to be the Player of the Week. That honor goes to a Butler Bulldog for the third straight week with Roosevelt Jones being named this week’s Big East Player of the Week after his 19 point and 11 rebound effort against then 9th ranked Purdue helped Butler to the win.
Drew Edwards didn’t average 30 points/game in high school. He didn’t leave the Baltimore area to attend a basketball-factory prep school. He didn’t run on the Nike EYBL, adidas Gauntlet or Under Armour Association circuits. He went to the same all-boys Catholic high school that his father, uncle and brother attended. He played with a non-shoe company affiliated AAU program coached by the same people who coached him in youth leagues growing up. He is loyal. He is competitive. He plays to win.
Providence’s locker room at halftime of last night’s game against Boston College was described by Ed Cooley afterwards as a “triage center.” Kris Dunn left the bench with a few minutes left in the first half with an apparent virus and then Ben Bentil rolls his ankle and makes his way to the locker room with a couple minutes left in the half. By the time Cooley and the rest of the Friars got to the locker room for halftime things were not looking up. Dunn left the arena with the virus but Bentil did return to the bench for the final 7 or so minutes of the game to watch with his teammates. All of Friartown was holding its collective breaths awaiting results of an X-ray of Bentil’s left ankle.
Ben Bentil’s star has been on the rise since the Providence Friars went out West over Thanksgiving weekend. Since Bentil set a career-high with 24 points in Providence’s opening round win over Evansville in the Wooden Legacy Tournament on Thanksgiving night, the sophomore from Delaware — by way of Ghana — has been on a tear of 20 point scoring efforts. Bentil scored 21 points in Providence’s blowout win against Hartford on Tuesday night at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center and followed that up by notching a game-high 23 points, including the game-winning tip-in as time expired against in-state rival Rhode Island on Saturday night.
The Atlanta Tipoff Club released their early season watch list for the 2016 Naismith Trophy, an award given to the College Player of the Year in Men’s Basketball. The early season list contains 50 players and the next release of a watch list by the Atlanta Tipoff Club will come on February 11, 2016 when they put out their midseason watch list of 30 players. Kris Dunn is one of the 50 names on the early season watch list and joins 3 other Big East players on the list: Ryan Arcidiacono (Villanova), Kellen Dunham (Butler) and D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (Georgetown).
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