Team: Providence Friars
2023-24 Record: 21-14 overall, 10-10 Big East
2023-24 Big East Finish: Tied for sixth, but lost the season series 2-0 to Villanova and lost the tiebreaker to end up as the #7 seed in the conference tournament behind the Wildcats.
Final 2023-24 KenPom.com Ranking: #59 out of 362 teams, down from their preseason rank of #54.
Final 2023-24 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #56 out of 362 teams, down from their preseason rank of #49.
Postseason: After thumping Georgetown in the first round of the conference tournament, Providence knocked off #2 seeded Creighton in the quarterfinals. They fell behind big against a shorthanded Marquette team in the semis, rallied to make it close, and then fell by 11. That left the Friars with not enough in their portfolio to make the NCAA tournament, and then they lost a home game to Boston College in the first round of the NIT.
Key Departures: The 2024 Big East Player of the Year is now with the Sacramento Kings. Devin Carter, who was not even one of the five most effective players in the league in the eyes of KenPom.com this season, left Providence after his junior year, and he was the #13 pick in the NBA Draft this summer. Carter averaged 19.7 points, 8.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.8 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game while shooting nearly 38% from behind the arc. After the Friars lost Bryce Hopkins to a season ending injury on January 3rd, Carter averaged 22.0 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 2.0 steals per game the rest of the way, up until sitting out the NIT game. That does help explain why he was named league POY….. but it doesn’t explain why he beat out UConn’s Tristen Newton or Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman.
Providence loses two more starters from that Big East semifinal game against Marquette. Josh Oduro finished the year as the #2 scorer on the team at 15.9 points per game, and he added 7.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists, and 1.3 blocks as the starting center on the roster. This was always going to be his only season in Friartown after spending four seasons with George Mason, so there’s no surprise in his departure. Same goes for Ticket Gaines, who spent two years at Tennessee before two more at George Mason. Gaines was good for 8.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, and an assist per game. His shooting numbers for the year — 30.4% from three — don’t look great, but he did climb up to 33.6% in PC’s 20 Big East games.
Garwey Dual didn’t really live up to his top 40 prospect hype as a freshman this past season, ending up at 3.3 points and just over a rebound in 18.5 minutes per game. His minutes were relatively consistent all year, but it seems he wasn’t happy with the situation in Rhode Island, as he’s now with Seton Hall. I’m going to include Rafael Castro here because he did play in 34 of 35 games for Providence, and that’s something. However, the 6’11” big man from New Jersey averaged just 9.3 minutes and only passed single digits 12 times and only six times after Christmas…. including twice against DePaul.
Key Returners: Bryce Hopkins went into 2023-24 with legitimate chances to be the Big East Player of the Year. Before he blew out his ACL against Seton Hall on January 3rd, Hopkins was averaging 16.3 points, 8.7 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and a steal per game. That’s absolutely First Team All-Big East type of stuff, and that means you’re in contention for POY. That’s pretty Steady Eddie stuff from what he did as a sophomore with the Friars as well, although his shooting touch — 36% in 22-23, under 19% in 23-24 on more attempts per game — had left him, at least for a little while. He’s still on the roster, mostly speaking because no one is taking a professional chance on a guy just months removed from an ACL tear. Is 10 months enough of a recovery time for Hopkins to be back in the lineup on Opening Night?
There are two starters returning from the Big East semifinal game, although in fairness to one guy, he was starting in place of Hopkins. That’s Rich Barron, and he won the starting spot away from Corey Floyd, who picked it up in the wake of the injury and also returns to the roster this fall. Barron only averaged 4.4 points and 1.4 rebounds per game last season, but those numbers were up to 6.5 points, 2.2 rebounds, and an assist while he was starting late in the year. Barron also shot over 42% from long range on nearly four attempts per game in that late season stretch, and all of that is pretty good stuff for a freshman. As for Floyd, his demotion to the bench was more about the lineup that the Friars wanted on the floor, as his minutes didn’t change all that much. He ended up averaging 4.7 points, 3.0 rebounds, an assist, and just under a steal in nearly 24 minutes per game during Big East play.
We skipped over Jayden Pierre, who is the other returning starter for Providence. After deciding to stick around through the coaching change after his freshman year, Pierre averaged over 30 minutes a game last season, and was quite useful on the court. You can go a lot of places with your off guard averaging 9.5 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game.
Key Additions: If the losses of Josh Oduro and Rafael Castro had you saying “oh, well, Providence is in trouble inside, aren’t they,” slow down. Oswin Erhunmwnse (Benin City, Nigeria) is a top 100 prospect out of Putnam Science Academy according to 247 Sports’ Composite rankings, and he measures in at 6’10 and 220 pounds. I don’t know if he’ll play right away though, because even though he’s the only likely impact freshman of the three on the roster, Providence also adds two big men through the portal.
Anton Bonke (7’2”, 270 lbs, Port Vila, Vanuatu) actually joined the roster mid-season as a transfer from Eastern Arizona College in the junior college ranks, and thus was obviously not eligible immediately. He was averaging 9.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 2.3 blocks per game for EAC in the 17 games he played for them in 2023-24, and while, yeah, it’s JuCo, he’s still a gigantic dude. The other big man transfer is Christ Essandoko (7’0”, 290 lbs, Clichy, France), who comes in from Saint Joseph’s. Providence lists him as a redshirt sophomore, as he was at St. Joe’s for two years, where he sat out in 2022-23 as either an academic redshirt or because he was academically ineligible, depending on which source you choose to read. This is actually the second time Essandoko is slated to join PC, as “transcript issues” held him up when Ed Cooley was the head coach. In any case, he averaged 8.2 points and 5.7 rebounds in 21 minutes a night for the Hawks last year.
I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s funny to think about Providence fans yelling “CHRIST, GET A REBOUND,” and it’s not clear if they’re talking about one particular player or the entire team.
I presume Jabri Abdur-Rahim (6’8”, 220 lbs, South Orange, NJ) is expecting a notable role with Providence this season. This is his bonus season of eligibility after one year at Virginia and three at Georgia. The son of 12 year NBA veteran Shareef Abdur-Rahim and one time Marquette prospect had a breakout year last season with the Bulldogs, averaging 12.2 points and 3.5 rebounds, both career highs, and he started in 27 of 29 appearances.
Wesley Cardet and Bensley Joseph are also in the “this is your last year” boat with Abdur-Rahim, as they were freshmen in 2021-22 and join the Friars for their fourth year of eligibility. This is Cardet’s third stop after one year at Samford and two at Chicago State. He was a starter for the Bulldogs, but the Florida native left BuckyBall after one year and was a star for CSU for two seasons. In 62 games for the Bobcats, he averaged 17.7 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.9 assists, and a steal per game. You might remember Cardet from a November 2022 game against Marquette, as he had 22/3/4 and two steals as the Golden Eagles romped, 82-68, thanks to a 34-10 run bridging halftime. Joseph has been a Hurricane for all of the last three years after including the Golden Eagles in his top five once upon a time, and he turned into a most of the time starter for Miami last season. He chipped in 9.6 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.5 steals per game in 2023-24, and he’s just barely under 38% as a three-point shooter for his career.
Do you want to mention Justyn Fernandez real quick right here? He joined the team a year ago, following his George Mason head coach to Providence after one year where he averaged 4.1 points and just short of two rebounds in 14 minutes a night. Fernandez missed all of last season with an injury, so he should be ready and available to make the contribution that the Friars thought he could 12 months ago.
Coach: Kim English, entering his second season at Providence and fourth season as a Division 1 head coach. He is now 55-43 overall as a head coach.
Outlook: Let’s start with repeating something I wrote about Providence back in March.
Even if you give Providence a pass for their four game losing streak in the wake of the season ending injury to Bryce Hopkins, they went 10-7 against high major competition with the roster that was going to be available for the postseason…. except that includes sweeps of Georgetown and DePaul…… so actually they’re 6-7, and they came up short in their final three tests of the regular season, including an 11 point home loss to a Villanova team that wasn’t going to get in the field. No, that’s not a tournament team.
To put a bit more of a analytical bent on it, before Bryce Hopkins was lost for the season, BartTorvik.com’s data sorting says that Providence was the #32 team in the country. Without Hopkins, like they would be for the tournament, PC was #63 in the country. If you give them a pass for their losing streak right after Hopkins’ injury, they were #55.
Providence was 9-13 in the first two quadrants on Selection Sunday. Of their six Q1 wins, two were road games against teams that didn’t make the tournament. Two more were before Hopkins was hurt. The other two are against Creighton, both without Hopkins, but “we can beat this one team!” is not a convincing argument.
In short: This was not a tournament team as constructed on Selection Sunday, and anyone that tells you differently either is lying to you or they have an agenda to push. Sorry, but that’s just how this thing works. Don’t like it? Too bad. Go win more games.
Kim English made a lot of noise last season about being left out of the NCAA tourney — again, for very obvious mathematical reasons — and how other teams were scheduling to slip through and into the field. English seemingly threatened at the time to essentially play no one who would remotely threaten the Friars, at least on paper, unless required to by way of previous arrangements, and then see if PC could just snake their way carefully through Big East play and into the field of 68. He appears to have paid off on this threat, as outside of the Battle 4 Atlantis and the Big East/Big 12 Battle, there’s a big fat bag of nothing on this schedule.
What’s that going to get the Friars? BartTorvik.com says a 17-12 record — with two more B4A games left to get thrown in there once they’re officially scheduled by way of tournament play — and a preseason #60 ranking. Here’s the real problem with this: That presumes Providence will have full access to a completely healthy Bryce Hopkins. Torvik projects him at 17 points and 7.7 rebounds per game while playing over 32 minutes a game.
What if he’s not there? What if he’s not ready to go at 100% speed at the start of preseason training? What if his injury sapped some measure of his athleticism?
There’s a real reason to think this might not be an NCAA tournament team in 2025 if Hopkins is completely back to form. If he’s something less than he was? Is there someone on this roster that can turn into even a bargain bin version of Devin Carter to help carry the weight? Heck, is there someone on this roster who can do that anyway, because it looks like the Friars are going to need that to happen to contend for Kim English’s first ever NCAA tournament appearance.
If they don’t have that AND they don’t have the Bryce Hopkins we remember seeing, the one that could put up 11 points and nine rebounds on an off night in a dumptrucking of the #6 team in the country? Could get ugly in Friartown….. and then they have to reset the deck all over again next year when they lose three of the transfers that just arrived because they only have one season of eligibility in front of them anyway.
