Brice Kofane has made his decision on where he will spend his last year of eligibility next season after graduation from Providence in May. That 5th year will be spent at Monmouth in the MAAC conference. He will join 2 other players from the class of 2014 for the Hawks including a player PC looked at in Austin Tilghman who is the “brother” of incoming PC big man Ben Bentil.
In 78 career games, Kofane averaged 1.6 ppg, 2.6 rpg and nearly a block/game.
Kofane will be immediately eligible and have one year of eligibility.
Eric Bossi over at Rivals.com released his final ranking for the Class of 2014 today. Three of the 4 members of Providence’s committed Class of 2014 are in the final top 90 with the lone member not in the top 150 being recent PG commit, Kyron Cartwright.
It’s officially the offseason now. March Madness has come and gone. Connecticut is the national champion.
The focus for fans now turns heavily to recruiting, discussing potential starters/lineups for their team next season, how many minutes and points per game and rebounds per game, etc. a kid they have never seen play before will have and, finally, who they will be playing out of conference (OOC). For Providence, recruiting means filling out their remaining 2 spots for the 2014 class with a focus on 5th year transfers and junior college players who can contribute immediately next season. Potential starters/lineups likely can’t be determined for the Friars until they have another guard in hand for 2014 and at some point in the coming weeks, I’ll enter the fray on that discussion with my own thoughts on that topic. For now though, my focus is on the OOC schedule that PC has lined up for next season.
As I mentioned in my piece reviewing the Big East’s first season with the current configuration, one of the big keys for maintaining the strength of this updated version of the Big East is for teams to play a strong OOC schedule. The reality is that most years won’t provide the opportunity to play a top 25 ranked opponent every week like the prior version of this conference did many years. My guess is that most years there will be about 2-3 teams in the top 25 with the potential for a great year having 50% of the league ranked. The 2013-2014 season saw the Big East have an OOC strength of schedule ranked 7th in the country. They likely need to be top 5 every year in that category. Things are off to a solid start with Creighton reportedly having agreed to a home and home series with Oklahoma beginning in Omaha next season. Also, it was reported over the weekend that St. John’s and Duke will restart their series on January 31, 2015 at Madison Square Garden after a two year hiatus. The Johnnies also will head to the Carrier Dome this season to take on former conference rival Syracuse in December 2014.
Kadeem Batts scored 9 points and grabbed two rebounds in only 16 minutes as his team advanced to the championship game to be played tonight – Click here to see the box score
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