Ben Bentil’s star has been on the rise since the Providence Friars went out West over Thanksgiving weekend. Since Bentil set a career-high with 24 points in Providence’s opening round win over Evansville in the Wooden Legacy Tournament on Thanksgiving night, the sophomore from Delaware — by way of Ghana — has been on a tear of 20 point scoring efforts. Bentil scored 21 points in Providence’s blowout win against Hartford on Tuesday night at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center and followed that up by notching a game-high 23 points, including the game-winning tip-in as time expired against in-state rival Rhode Island on Saturday night.
The Atlanta Tipoff Club released their early season watch list for the 2016 Naismith Trophy, an award given to the College Player of the Year in Men’s Basketball. The early season list contains 50 players and the next release of a watch list by the Atlanta Tipoff Club will come on February 11, 2016 when they put out their midseason watch list of 30 players. Kris Dunn is one of the 50 names on the early season watch list and joins 3 other Big East players on the list: Ryan Arcidiacono (Villanova), Kellen Dunham (Butler) and D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (Georgetown).
Another National Player of the Year watch list has been released and, not surprisingly, Kris Dunn’s name is among the list of 33 players being considered for the award. The Oscar Robertson Trophy is given out by the USBWA annually to the National Player of the Year. The USBWA is made up of nearly 1,000 sports journalists and each member is eligible to vote for this and other USBWA awards. For the purpose of full disclosure, I am a USBWA member and a voter for this award. Dunn was also named to the Wooden Award watch list that was released on November 17th.
The preseason honors and attention hasn’t slowed down for Providence’s Kris Dunn. After being named the #1 player in college basketball in 2015-16 by CBS Sports on Monday, Dunn was named to the preseason watch list for the 2016 Bob Cousy Award — given to top point guard in college basketball each season. Dunn joins 19 other players on the preseason watch list. He was also on the in-season watch list last season announced on February 20th, along with 16 other players. Utah’s Delon Wright won the award in 2015. No Providence player has ever won the award that was established in 2003 with Jameer Nelson of St. Joseph’s winning the inaugural award.
Ed Cooley has stated from day one in Providence that Friartown is a family. Well apparently there’s plenty of sharing that happens in the Friartown family as Kris Dunn was named the Big East’s Co-Defensive Player of the Year on Monday by the league’s coaches and on Wednesday the Big East announced that Dunn would share the Big East Player of the Year Award with Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono.
The game started with Villanova jumping out to a 9-0 lead and that was a bad omen for the night. For much of the early first half Providence had more turnovers than field goals. Villanova scored 14 points of 14 first half turnovers by the Friars. The number for the game would be an ugly 25 Villanova points off 15 Providence giveaways. Other ugly disparities on the stat sheet in Tuesday night’s game was 26/31 from the free throw line for Villanova against just 6/12 free throws for Providence and 13/25 from downtown for the Wildcats while the Friars managed just 3/10 from 3-point range.
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