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Dear PC Students: Keep It Up #pcbb

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Dear PC Students,

You took a lot of heat over the last week. Most of it pretty deserved. Your attendance at basketball games at the Dunk has been pretty dismal. But something crazy happened on Tuesday night. You showed up. And you stood up. And you were loud. I know the guys couldn’t finish off the comeback but wasn’t that comeback in the 2nd half a lot of fun? Did you feel the electricity the Dunk can have if you are there in force and making your presence known? The rest of the crowd feeds off of you. If you stand up and yell and start chants, the other fans in the building will join you. You saw first hand how loud the Dunk can be when everyone is standing and cheering on our Friars. Opposing players should want to HATE playing in front of you at the Dunk. St. John’s player Jakarr Sampson said “this is a hard place to play. They got really good fans. The crowd was into it. I feel like that really brought them back to life, the crowd.”

Tuesday night was great. But there are 3 home games left on the schedule. Only 3 more opportunities to see this team and great group of seniors, Ted Bancroft, Kadeem Batts, Bryce Cotton and Lee Goldsbrough, play at the Dunk. So my message to you is this: Keep it up.

Go Friars!

Mike Hopkins ’10

Links of the Day

#pcbb Links of the Day 2/5/14

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Game Recaps

General News

  • Rocky’s Road – Why the Providence Friars Will Make or Miss the NCAA Tournament
  • No rest for the weary – Ed Cooley is expected to be in Huntington, WV tonight to take in the matchup of Huntington Prep and Carlisle. While Carlisle features the #1 player in the class of 2016 in Thon Maker, Cooley is likely more interested in the immediate term with watching 2014 PG recruit JaQuan Lyle who just returned from a weekend official visit to Oregon. I’m sure Cooley also wants to check in on 2014 commit Jalen Lindsey who has been playing very well this season for Huntington Prep.
Game Previews & Recaps

Game Notes & Preview: PC vs. St. John’s 2/4/14 #pcbb

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Where: Dunkin’ Donuts Center – Providence, RI

When: 7:00pm

How: Fox Sports 1/WEEI 103.7 FM

Game Notes

Stat Review

In conference games this season, St. John’s is last in the Big East in FT Rate on offense (29.0) , likely because they seem to shoot so many jumpshots and “tough 2’s”. Also, the Johnnies give up the highest % of offensive rebounds in the conference (33.8%). They are the best at Turnover rate (20.2%), Block % (17.6% – nearly double the national avg), and Steal % (10.8%) though.

On the flipside, in conference games this season, Providence is leading the Big East in FT Rate on offense (47.3). The Friar offense pulls down the highest % of offensive rebounds in the conference (34.8%) and has the best Block rate (6.4%) and FT % (74.9%) in the Big East.

Game Preview

In the last matchup between these two teams on January 16th in Queens, PC got out to a fast start and then let St. John’s back into the game as the first half wore on. Ultimately, this would be a gutty performance by the entire squad but especially the man, the myth, the legend – Bryce Cotton. Cotton played all 50 minutes of that game including sinking the game winner in the 2nd overtime. Kadeem Batts played one of his better games of the year. He and Cotton worked the pick and roll nicely. Batts did most of his work on offense from the free throw line where he went 11/12. Hopefully Batts gets back to being aggressive and taking it hard to the rim because if he has another rough game, PC could very easily let this crucial home win slip away. There isn’t a ton of margin for error at this point in the season. The Friars need to take care of business at home, especially when they are nearly 5 point favorites.

Last game the group of Cotton, Batts, Henton and Harris accounted for 73 of PC’s 84 points or 87% of the scoring. Fortune and Desrosiers were the only other Friars to even score. Fortune’s only bucket, despite playing all 50 minutes, came just over 1 minute into the 1st overtime to tie the game at 72 and Desrosiers scored his 8 points in the first 35 minutes of the game but didn’t play much at all in either overtime session. It will be critical for the Friars to get production from at least 4 guys again tomorrow. I expect Cotton to put up around 20 points and Henton to put up around 15 points. After that, it’s kind of a mystery game to game. Harris played very well against DePaul on Saturday to rebound from a brutal game at Marquette on Thursday night. I think Harris will have another good game tomorrow and put up around 16 points. That gets PC to 51 points between those 3 players. Can Batts deliver 12-15 points? I believe he can and will. Fortune will try to do his best to slow down D’Angelo Harrison again but Harrison is playing much better lately as is the entire SJU team. Harrison led all scorers on Saturday with 27 points against Marquette. Chris Obekpa had 7 blocks against the Golden Eagles as well. This will be a different team than Providence saw less than 3 weeks ago. But it’s still a team coached by Steve Lavin and they haven’t really seemed to be able to get into any kind of rhythm on offense. They dribble the ball way too much and rely on guys like Harrison to create and hit tough shots. Many SJU fans complained about Lavin’s coaching during and after our game at Carnesseca and they had nothing but high praise for Ed Cooley.

The key to this game for the Friars will be to get Kadeem Batts involved early. In Providence’s 6 losses, Batts has averaged 7.5 ppg and only reached double digits once – the blowout loss against Villanova – when he scored 10 points in 27 minutes. In Providence’s 16 wins, Batts has averaged 13.8 ppg.

Prediction: St. John’s 65 Providence 67