This Thoughts from the Road: Home Command Center Edition is brought to you by my shiny new home office and is fueled by the bacon and eggs I cooked up for dinner.
While the headline doesn’t tell the entire story, it gets across the true takeaway from this game. Yes, it was ugly. Yes, Providence played poorly. But when the NCAA Selection Committee looks at Providence at the end of the year, this game at Creighton will be a road win. That’s it. A road win that helps Providence’s RPI because it counts as 1.4 wins. It’s really as simple as that.
This Thoughts from the Road: Standing Around in a Bar Edition is brought to you by Vince asking for the foul situation every few minutes and is fueled by boneless wings at Croxley’s Ale House in Farmingdale.
Providence started slow, clawed back into the game, went on a second half run to open up an 8-point lead and then went cold and allowed Marquette back into the game. That’s a pretty simple summary of the action in Providence’s game against Marquette on January 5th. It was another slow start for Ed Cooley’s group, as the Friars trailed, 7-0, 4+ minutes into the game before they scored their first basket at the 15:40 mark of the first half on a Kris Dunn layup. Prior to that, there were 4 turnovers and 5 missed field goals. Slow starts are going to be a lot harder to overcome in Big East play and with a fairly short rotation it will be asking a lot for Providence’s core players to expend energy every night coming back from early deficits.
This Thoughts from the Road is brought to you by nachos and pizza from Trinity Brewhouse and is fueled by the hospitality of the Smerkers and their insanely comfortable couch.
Before I get into my thoughts from the actual game against St. John’s, I want to share a text I got from my buddy Charlie: “I think the bandwagon is finally full for this team.” Chaz is right on with that thought. Downtown Providence was absolutely hopping on Saturday. Murphy’s filled up by noon and the wait for a table at Trinity approached an hour. When this season started, Providence vs. St. John’s on a Saturday afternoon of New Year’s weekend being a sellout was not something I would have expected. That’s exactly what happened. Ed Cooley told people he was going to light Providence on fire. If you haven’t gotten onboard, as Cooley suggested, you’re late.
Freshman sharpshooter Ryan Fazekas started the first 9 games of his career at Providence before missing the Friars’ December 9th contest against Boston College due to a bout of mononucleosis. The Indiana native had been back at home recovering with his family for the last two weeks or so and Kevin McNamara of the Providence Journal reported on Twitter that Ed Cooley will again be without Fazekas for Providence’s Big East opener on December 31st at Butler.
This Thoughts from the Road: Couch Edition is brought to you by the 5J Christmas party and is powered by the deep reflection during an all-Latin Christmas concert at the Cloisters. Special shoutout to my dad because Joe R said so.
Ben Bentil did his best Willis Reed impression, albeit in a less grand manner. Bentil being available in the first place made it clear the ankle injury he suffered on Wednesday against Boston College was, as it looked on TV, a standard basketball ankle roll. The fact that he was able to put on his cape with 5:15 left in the first half with his team trailing 2-8 Bryant by 9 means he would have started this game if Ed Cooley needed him to. Since he went on to play the final 5:15 of the first half and the beginning 19:43 of the second half, Bentil showed he is a tough dude. The other thing he showed is that he is a true team leader. With Kris Dunn in sweats on the bench due to illness and his young teammates struggling with a team Vegas decided was a 21 point underdog at the line’s open, Bentil’s mere presence in the game was the calming factor that players like Bryce Cotton, LaDontae Henton and Dunn developed into. Bentil only scored 2 points in the first half — a jumper he made right after entering the game — but it was clear the tide was turning back in Providence’s favor. The Friars finished that 5:15 stretch on a 9-4 run to close the half down just 4 points after being down by 11 — Bryant’s largest lead of the game — with 5:39 left.
This Thoughts from the Road: Desk Edition is brought to you from my brand-spanking new home office, complete with my chair that arrived Wednesday just in time for me to be sweating from putting it together at the tip-off.
This game harkened some memories of the 2014-15 Friar season. By the end of the game, I was reminded of Providence’s first Big East road win last season at Hinkle Fieldhouse where Ed Cooley relied on the “all-grit team” lineup of Kris Dunn, Ted Bancroft, Junior Lomomba, LaDontae Henton and Paschal Chukwu. Cooley ran 4 of those 5 guys for the entire 20 minute second half, en route to an impressive Providence road win. That was the good part, the ending. The beginning of the second half reminded me of another of Providence’s Big East road contests from last season: Xavier. Right as the second half was getting underway, Cooley walked off the bench and into the locker room. He would be taken to a Cincinnati hosptial and spent the night there. What ensued was ugly basketball from the Friars while Andre LaFleur at the helm. Providence played sloppy, looked totally out of sync and got overrun by the Musketeers, who would win the game by 9 after the Friars took a 5 point lead into the break. That seemed to be exactly what was happening in the beginning of the second half of this game. Providence had twice as many turnovers as points 8 minutes into the half and they looked lost on offense. Boston College failed to take advantage, the Eagles themselves dealing with their own depletion thanks to a norovirus caught at Chipotle over the weekend. The young Friars managed to do enough on defense and feed Rodney Bullock enough to keep the Eagles at arm’s length before pulling back away in the last 5 minutes.
This Thoughts from the Road: Couch and Bed Edition is brought to you by leftover Thanksgiving food and lots of coffee thanks to the late tipoffs in California.
Despite losing for the first time this season on Sunday night to Michigan State, the Friars were still big winners over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Before I even talk about the impact of getting a win over a top-15 team on a neutral court I want to mention the opportunities that Providence gained from a schedule perspective. Consider this slate of opponents: Evansville, Santa Clara, UC Irvine. That’s what Providence probably would have faced had they not gotten off to a good start by beating a solid Evansville team. Instead, the Friars got to play Arizona and Michigan State — two teams who are likely to be top 4 seeds in the NCAA Tournament — not to mention they beat one and hung tough with the other.
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