In the first of what could be numerous All-American honors for Kris Dunn, USA Today is the first to plant the redshirt junior on an All-American team. Dunn is on the Third Team with fellow Big East player Trevon Bluiett (Xavier), Georges Niang (Iowa State), Ben Simmons (LSU) and Jarrod Uthoff (Iowa). Dunn, who was named one of 15 finalists for the John R. Wooden Award on Saturday, figures to make more appearances on All-American teams despite a downturn in production for a stretch of the Big East season.
ESPN and Scout.com released their updated recruit rankings for the class of 2016 after the summer grassroots season and now it’s time for Rivals to follow suit. ESPN and Scout had differing views on most of the Providence recruits within their Top 100’s. Rivals’ rankings mirror those of ESPN with Wenyen Gabriel jumping from the 80’s to 17. There is also a Friar recruit who is visiting Providence in October that is making his debut in Rivals’ Top 150 in Maliek White and Kevin Marfo rounds out the Top 150 in the final slot. Providence is visiting him at his school on September 9th.
With the first live period beginning on Friday it makes sense that Rivals would want to update their rankings for the class of 2016. That class is now the focus for most schools now that the 2014-15 season has been put to bed officially. Providence only currently has 1 open scholarship for the class of 2016 but that could change depending on Kris Dunn’s decision and any other player movements that could occur between now and the fall of 2016.
Joe Lunardi’s latest Selection Sunday bracket and “Bracket Math” are out Sunday morning. Within the Big East the only real movement since yesterday is that Butler falls off the 6 line and the Bulldogs are now a 7 seed. There’s also an intriguing potential matchup for Providence and an old head coach of theirs. One other thing to check out below is that, per a suggestion on Twitter, I have included the percentage of teams in the field from each conference in the “Conference Breakdown” portion of this post.
Here is a breakdown of where the 6 Big East teams fall on the seed lines Lunardi’s latest bracket:
Joe Lunardi has updated his bracket through action on Friday night and he still has 6 Big East teams in with half of those teams on the 6 line. Villanova made a big move from the 4th 1 seed to the 2nd 1 seed with the losses of Virginia and Duke in the ACC semifinals last night. The biggest thing for Villanova is they are now locked into a 1 seed even with a loss tonight in the Big East Tournament finals. If they win they get to stay in the East region and that would be nice for their fans.
Here is a breakdown of where the 6 Big East teams fall on the seed lines Lunardi’s latest bracket:
Joe Lunardi considers the following Big East teams to have a 90% or better chance of making it to the NCAA Tournament:
Villanova
Georgetown
Butler
Providence
St. John’s
Xavier
That means it appears the Big East will get 60% of it’s teams into the field of 68. The only conference to have a higher percentage of their team’s in Lunardi’s bracket on March 9th is the Big 12 who has 70% of their league in the field.
Here is a breakdown of where the 6 Big East teams fall on the seed lines Lunardi’s latest bracket:
Providence appears to be safely on their way to a repeat trip to the Blue Carpet for the first time since they appeared in the 1989 and 1990 NCAA Tournament fields. They lost their first game in both of those years. That’s something Ed Cooley and this crew will be looking to change this year. I’ll be doing regular examinations of Providence’s NCAA Tournament resume as the regular season winds down.
This week I’ll also be doing some blind resumes to compare to Providence because that always seems fun. Let’s get started.
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