PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The theory went that once Providence got their entire roster together, the Friars could be pretty good. They were winning, albeit against a light schedule, with six or seven players and having to start a walk-on once. They were winning with some of them playing out of position, and one of the players they were without was their senior leader.
That hasn’t happened, however, as Tuesday’s 68-64 loss to Pittsburgh was their seventh in nine games after running out to a 8-2 start. Instead, they have been humbled since getting their entire roster together.
“Right now I’ve got to teach our guys how to win in this league, and right now I’ve got to do a better job of doing that because we’re close, we’re just not there,” said a subdued head coach Ed Cooley.
The defensive end is where the difference can be seen. In the first ten games, only UMass shot better than 40 percent from the field against the Friars. Since then, every team has shot 40 percent or better, with Pittsburgh shooting 51 percent on Tuesday night. In Big East play, opponents are shooting 47 percent and scoring over 71 points per game, both up significantly from non-conference. Coaches will always emphasize defense, and Cooley is no different, but this isn’t coach-speak. The Friars are just not as good a defensive team as they were earlier, and since their scoring has been consistent it’s the defense that’s the difference.
Cooley noted that freshman Kris Dunn may have played on Tuesday night, but was not feeling well and they felt almost like they didn’t have him. He said Dunn helps their identity at that end of the floor. With him being limited and the rest of the team not picking it up enough, Pittsburgh executed very well at key moments and always seemed to have an answer for any rallies the Friars could muster up.
It’s a good thing Dunn has established himself at the defensive end, because offensively he’s been quite inconsistent since he made his debut over a month ago against Colgate. He’s having the kind of ups and downs most freshmen have. Against Colgate, he struggled shooting but had 13 assists and six rebounds. He had six assists the next time out and has not had more than two since then. He’s shooting over 34 percent on the season after going 0-3 from the field on Tuesday night.
Bryce Cotton remains a force offensively and was just that on Tuesday night with 24 points on 9-16 shooting. Vincent Council also had a good second half offensively. LaDontae Henton hasn’t been the same since his 37-point outing at Brown, a night when he wasn’t good defensively and Cooley was openly critical of him for that after the game. In all, it points back to the defense as the starting point for the bottom line with this team.
“We’ll win when we can guard,” said Cooley. “We score when we defend. It’s basketball. Great defensive teams score because they score off their defense. That’s how you win. We didn’t get stops when we needed to, and they did.”
The Friars made several comeback attempts in the second half, but Pittsburgh never surrendered the lead. Pittsburgh went up by ten not long after the last media timeout, but Providence rallied and got within a possession a couple of times. The Panthers always had an answer, especially coming out of timeouts, doing enough to keep the Friars at arm’s length most of the night. It was a valiant effort by the home team, but the end result is another one in the right-hand column.
“The problem is we’re not playing with that urgency for 40 minutes,” Cooley said of the late rally. “We’ve shown that now in six or seven consecutive games. I think we’ve come out of the locker room one, maybe twice, in the last seven games with a hungry, determined attitude. It’s frustrating to me, but I’ve got to remain patient and coach my team.”
Slowly but surely, the Friars seem to be settling into more of a rotation. Players are starting to get to the point of having consistent roles. Those are things they couldn’t really do at first when the entire team was together, because players got used to the roles they were in. This group also had not played together before with Dunn, Sidiki Johnson and Council, and that’s a factor as well. They’re still having the growing pains that come with that.
The Friars had to make a personnel adjustment right at the time the level of competition went up. It’s bad timing, to be sure, but the good thing is that they were adding and not subtracting players. However, it’s made for a different kind of adjustment, and the end results thus far have not matched the theory. Cooley will keep pressing on with this group, liking some of the intangibles and feeling that this team isn’t that far away from turning some of these losses into wins.
“We’ve got to earn our respect,” said Cooley. “That’s just the nature of building a program.”
