Rivals has released an updated Top 150 for the Class of 2017 and Providence has plenty of recruits among the ranked, including newly committed big man Dajour Dickens. The Friars need to upgrade the talent on their roster and 2017 will be the best place to do it short of landing a big man in 2016 like Kalif Young, Darius Hicks or Cheickna Dembele.
Providence Recruits in the Top 150:
Continue reading Recruiting News: Rivals Releases Updated Class Of 2017 Top 150 Recruit Rankings
Providence got some good news on the recruiting front after another loss on the court when 2017 Dajour Dickens officially committed to Ed Cooley and the Friars. The news comes directly from Dickens himself this time after a false start report last Friday. Dickens is a Virginia native and stands at 6’11. He visited Providence for the Georgetown game on February 13th and evidently liked what he saw. Dickens is enrolled at Bethel High School and runs with famed grassroots program Boo Williams.
Continue reading Providence Officially Lands Commitment from 2017 Big Man
The Big East currently has two teams sitting atop the league’s standings, two teams toiling away in the cellar and the other six teams beating each other to death in the middle. This has been the recipe each of the first three seasons of this configuration of the Big East. Villanova remains the most consistent. Jay Wright’s program has been among those two at the top all three seasons. The other program on high this season — Xavier — also appears to be in a position to stay there. That leaves teams like Butler, Creighton, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence and Seton Hall to bloody each other’s win/loss records in hopes of snagging the other three spots that make up the top half of the league.
Continue reading Building a Program: Providence Should Emulate Conference Leaders
Providence has been desperately chasing big men recruits since Paschal Chukwu transferred to Syracuse in May 2015 and Alex Owens failed to qualify that later summer. Ben Bentil has been forced to slide over the the center spot this season with little behind him in the way of backup. Bentil has obviously had a tremendous sophomore campaign, but he has had struggles on the defensive side of the floor at times and Providence has been vulnerable to teams that attack the rim. Those teams are met with little to no resistance en route to a layup and that’s a big problem for Ed Cooley. The search for a big man in the class of 2016 has taken Providence all over the country and, lately, even into Canada. The latest name to surface is a new name to just about everyone in the basketball recruiting world: Cheickna Dembele.
Continue reading Big Mystery: Cheickna Dembele No Longer Unknown
