How: Audio Only on Friars.com (John Rooke and Joe Hassett)
Game Notes
Providence is 67-39 all time in exhibition games including 18 straight wins at home. Their last exhibition game loss was in 2007 against Siviglia Wear Teramo while the team was in Italy.
Stonehill was 19-10 last season including a 14-7 record within Northeast-10 conference play. They return 4 of their 5 top scorers from a season ago, including starers Ryan Logan (13.7 ppg) and Carter Smith (13.4 ppg).
Friar coach Ed Cooley is an alumnus of Stonehill from the class of 1994. He was a 3-time team captain for the Skyhawks. Cooley played in 107 career games while at Stonehill amassing 795 points and 594 rebounds good for averages of 7.4 points per game and 5.6 rebounds per game for his career. He also was an assistant coach at Stonehill for the 1995-96 season under then-coach Dave DeCiantis.
The last time Cooley coached against his alma mater prior to last season’s exhibition game was in 2010 while he was the head coach at Fairfield. The Skyhawks beat Cooley’s Stags squad 61-60.
Providence defeated Stonehill last season, 93-49, in exhibition action on November 8, 2014.
Stonehill’s first official game of the season will be played on November 13th against Post University as part of the Stonehill Tip-Off Classic.
Sedee Keita is the key to Providence’s 2016 recruiting class. No offense to committed point guard Maliek White but that previous statement is a fact. White was a big-time get for Ed Cooley and his staff because they were looking to replace Kris Dunn — the former McDonald’s All-American is expected to jump to the NBA after his redshirt junior season in 2015-16. Had Cooley and his staff not landed White they would still be chasing other guards but if they didn’t find one they wanted in 2016 it wouldn’t have been a massive blow. The current roster has two or three players who are capable of handling point guard duties for stretches, including sophomore Kyron Cartwright who started some games alongside Dunn a season ago and could very well do the same this season. The class of 2017 — especially in New England — is loaded with talented guards and the Friar coaching staff is already heavily involved with a number of them.
It’s finally here! The first episode of the pcbb1917.com Friartown Fan Voice podcast has been recorded, uploaded and turned loose on the public! I focused primarily on recruiting in this first episode and also answered some submitted questions by you, the fans. I hope you enjoy this one and I plan on doing a couple more before the season begins in mid-November. This should be available in iTunes shortly so keep an eye out for that so you can subscribe and be automatically notified when a new episode is uploaded.
You can submit your own questions and comments that could be answered on a future podcast by calling the Friartown Fan Voice podcast voicemail line at 516-500-PCBB or 516-500-7222, emailing me at mhopkins@pcbb1917.com, tweeting at me @pcbb1917, commenting on the Facebook page or directly in the comments section of this post.
2016 Shamorie Ponds announcing his final 4 schools via his Twitter account on Sunday. On Wednesday night it was reported by Adam Zagoria that Ponds has scheduled a visit to Providence on September 11th. The road from Sunday to Wednesday was an interesting one though. Ponds included the Friars in his final 4 list even though he had yet to speak with Ed Cooley. Apparently Cooley and Ponds have communicated because a visit date was added to the calendar to go along with visits to St. John’s on August 28th and Minnesota on September 18th. Ponds visited Creighton — the other school in his final 4 — last weekend.
Providence is continuing the search for big men to come in immediately as part of their recruiting class of 2015. Recent San Diego State decommit Brodricks Jones is the latest target that Ed Cooley is zeroing in on. Jon Rothstein tweeted that Jones plans to visit Providence sometime during the first week of August. Jones currently has dates set for visits to UTEP (August 1st) and Memphis (August 4th). The ideal scenario for the Friars would be to get Jones on campus around August 8th when they plan to host their annual Elite Camp. Jones decommitted from the Aztecs at the end of June shortly after receiving a qualifying SAT score. He originally committed to Steve Fisher on July 31, 2014 and signed a National Letter of Intent in November 2014.
With NC State forward transfer Kyle Washington committing to Mick Cronin and the Cincinnati Bearcats on Wednesday its time for the Friar staff to turn their attention to the class of 2016 and beyond. The likelihood that there is still a player available that could contribute next season is almost nonexistent. The only scenario out there right now is probably a darkhorse international player but that is in the “massive longshot” category.
The first July live evaluation period is rapidly approaching and the Providence staff needs to be focused on players from the class of 2016 with an eye towards players in 2017. Some Big East compatriots have already gotten off to good starts in 2016 with Butler landing a pair of 4 star recruits in Joey Brunk and Howard Washington, Villanova picking up consensus top 20 recruit Omari Spellman and Xavier dipping into the New England Prep ranks to grab top 125 forward Tyrique Jones.
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