Brief Postgame: Providence 68, Syracuse 85

Once again sorry for the delay in the postgame, things have been a little crazy around here this week.  Since weare behind and everything that needs to be said about the game has been said we will keep this brief.

Syracuse is a very, very good team.  We personally think the fact that Villanova and Kentucky are ranked ahead of them in the latest polls is a bit of a joke.  The Orange don’t just beat teams, they blow them out (unless those teams are DePaul or Pitt) and we were no exception.  We kept things close in the first half, but in the second half, essentially without their best player, they were able to dominate.  Also, we have once again allowed someone to score a career high against us.  Kris Joseph came off of the bench to score 23 points, and Arinze Onuaku scored a season high with 20.

Vincent Council had yet another nice game.  A few too many turnovers, but 16 points and 9 assists more than makes up for that in our opinion.  Marshon was back in the starting lineup and did well.  He had 14 points, but really didn’t do too much else.  He needs him to fill up some other stat besides scoring if he is going to be a major contributor.  Greedy once again put in work.  25 points and 11 boards looks good, but that dunk was ridiculous.  He was 50% from the field, but took eight three pointers.  He made three of them, but we still aren’t sure how we feel about Greedy’s threes.  We suppose we don’t mind them too much, but some he should pass up on.

But not too much else to say.  It was a rough game, but Syracuse is a great team, and very difficult to beat in the Carrier Dome.  Marquette is up next.  The first time around things didn’t go too hot, but maybe we will fare better at home… and maybe Greedy won’t get ejected from this game.

Here is the Greedy Dunk (one of the only bright spots from this game), which we are pretty sure most of you have all seen by now, but this wouldn’t be a PC Basketball Blog if we didn’t post it.  We thought it deserved the top spot, but a botch alley oop from John Wall beat it out.  We think that had it been John Wall who threw it off the backboard to himself then dunked it, it not only would have been the #1 play, but would have been shown to death on Sports Center, but hey, #2 isn’t too shabby either.  And where ever Sports Center ranked it we all know that dunk was crazy, even if Greedy made it look easy.

Postgame: WhoConn???

After an atrocious loss on Saturday night at the Dunk, the Friars regrouped and were able to knockoff #19 Connecticut by a score of 81 to 66.  After falling down by as much as ten in the first half, the Friars were able to rally and went into the locker room leading by one.  The second half was close and the teams exchanged leads at one time, but Providence built upon their half time lead and stretch things out to as much as 18 at one time.  The Friars were led in scoring by Greedy Peterson who netted 23 points in yet another double double performance.  Bilal Dixon also had a double double and after scoring no points in the first half Sharuad Curry tallied 18 in the second.  UConn had two players score 17 in Gavin Edwards and Kemba Walker.  Walker played an outstanding game, but senior leader Jerome Dyson was not much of a factor.  With the loss UConn drops to 3-4 in the BIG EAST.  They will next take on Marquette.  With the win the Friars improve to 4-4 in league play and will travel out to Ohio to play Cincinnati in their next contest.

Going into this game we weren’t expecting too much, especially after what happened against USF on Saturday.  In the pregame we asked that we just see inspired basketball. That meant hitting the boards like never before, beating UConn on every hustle play, not taking a single play off, and most importantly an intensity on defense unlike anything we have seen from our guys this year.  We are happy to say that we got it!  By no means did we shoot the ball particularly well, but it turns out when you play defense and do the other small things you don’t always have to… how about that.

For people who were at the game, the environment was great.  It has been slow going this year so far, but the students came out for the big game and had a positive impact.  There are few things better than Greedy throwing down a put back on a PC run and having UConn call a 30 second time out, which happens to be just enough time to Fist Pump Jersey Shore Style to Sandstorm.  Speaking of Jersey shore, the large head cut-outs of Snooki and Pauly D. could have only helped our cause.  We also enjoyed the Tiger Woods head.

Back to the game though.  You look at UConn and no doubt about it they are intimidating.  They have great height and athleticism, and have NBA talent in Dyson, Walker, and Robinson.  But that never deterred the Friars.  Even with the height difference Providence played well inside.  In the first half it seemed like we were more likely to get out shots blocked by Ater Majok than to get any sort of rebound, but in the second half we owned the boards.  We wound up out-rebounding the Huskies 46 to 35 and pulled down 17 offensive boards in the process.  Hats off to Greedy and Bilal… and VC for taking control of the glass.

We also saw some defensive intensity.  Sure we got beat down the court a few many times.  Or gave up way too easy alley-oops, and maybe were caught a little out of position on small plays, or looked flat just a few times, but those were the exceptions this game which is a good thing.  There was such a noticeable change in the intensity and the effort the team put forth.  It was just great to see.  We blew it against USF, no doubt about it, but we responded as good as we possibly could have.  And that was great to see, and says a lot about this young team and Coach Keno.  And we aren’t so sure we would have beat UConn had we not lost to USF.  Maybe not though.

But it was a great game to watch, especially because we won, and it was a great atmosphere.  The team showed resilience and it is always nice to beat our neighbors in UConn.  This makes it four out of the last five or something like that.  We don’t know what it is, but we just play well against them.  Maybe Providence really is the  bain of UConn athletics.  Probably not, but its always nice to beat them on a consistent basis.

PFB Player of the Game: Greedy Peterson- We know VC had a great game.  No doubt about it.  And we know people are getting numb to Greedy’s double doubles.  But we liked Greedy in this game for a few reasons.  His work on the boards was essential.  14 rebounds is huge.  And his timing in this game was great.  He got something done when we needed.  Whether it be is first half semi-dunk when fans had nothing to cheer about, or his timely three when we were down, or his monster follow on a fast break miss that sent the crowd into an eruption as UConn had to call a time out, or retrieving a Curry air ball to put it in for a dunk, Greedy came up big.  Greedy is exciting and gets the fans into the game, which can not be underestimated.  We are taking nothing away from VC, who filled up the stat sheet with seven rebounds, eight assists, and four steals (he did have 5 turnovers).  Greedy beat or tied him in most statistics and only had one turnover, but the way VC pushed up the ball and looked in control out there was great.  But we thought Greedy with his 23 points, 14 points, three assists, and four steals was the key… but this is the closest we have come to giving a co-player of the game.

Links:

Friars.com

Men’s Basketball Upsets No. 19/19 Connecticut, 81-66

ProJo.com

Friars bounce back with flair, top UConn, 81 to 66

Friars Journal: Council forgets bad night, comes up big

Friarblog

Friars Can Ger 700 Miles to the Gallon on this Hog [Game Recaps]

UCHuskies Blog

Sad effort does in Huskies

UConn Huskies Basketball Blog

Chopping Block

Postgame: PC… Epic Fail vs. USF

Now it has been a few days and we figured we would address this loss as briefly as possible.  No game recap is necessary, just a few thoughts.  For those of you who saw the game we are sorry.  We couldn’t believe it either.  There are four quick points we want to make:

1.  Vincent Council. 17 points, 6 rebounds, and five assists; but couldn’t make the free throws down the line.  Now we are not about to get on VC, he is just a freshman and had a good game minus the free throws.  And although we have come to expect so much from him, he is still only a freshman.  That said, he better be working on those free throws in practice.

2.  Brian McKenzie. Coaches always say its not important who starts the game but it’s who finishes the game.  Why he is still starting is still an enigma, but fine let him start.  But do not have him in to close out a game.  He does nothing out there.  Maybe he is a leader type figure, but maybe he should lead from the bench.  He does nothing for this team, and it is time to give other people more of an opportunity.  And his experience means nothing by the looks of it so when its crunch time and we need to hold a lead, we would rather not see him in.

3.  Defense.  So we all know we aren’t big on defense here at PC, but c’mon.  There is a difference between bad defense and no defense.  We have no defense.  The fact that a team could almost double their season scoring average against us at home is crazy.  The fact that Dominique Jones, as good as he is, could wind up with 46 points is unacceptable.  How many times did he just drive into the lane with a soft pull-up floater?…  About a million.  And there was nobody there to stop his penetration or meet him further up the key for a lower percentage shot.  Defense is a team fail.  The players and the coaches are directly to blame for the joke of a defense we play.

4.  Coach Keno. We argree with his quote, except for the fact that no blame went to him.  Sure you expect your players to be able to make free throws, protect the ball, and get a defensive stop, but there is some coaching involved too.  It should never have been that close to begin with, and you have to question the personnel in the game near the end.  But just as terrible as things were down the stretch the defense was what killed all game.  Sure we had a big lead for lots of the game, and the “if they score 100 points, its ok as long as we score 101 points was seeming to working,” but clearly that fell through.  To win in the BIG EAST you need to be able to play defense and come up with stops.  We are happy our style has recruited some better players, but other teams are recruiting just as good and better players… and they will be able to lock down on D.  Defense is something you have to want to do, you have to want to be good at, you have to work for; Coach Keno clearly needs to put a higher premium on defense, or else we may have already won our last game of the season.

So I guess the only thing that could make this terrible loss a little better is a win against UConn.  Crazier things have happened, but trust us… we are definitely not holding our breath on that one.

Vincent Council BIG EAST Rookie of the Week

After a monster 24 point game in a losing effort to Marquette and a solid game in a win over DePaul, Vincent Council has earned himself BIG EAST Rookie of the Week honors.

Council was tabbed as BIG EAST Rookie of the Week after he averaged 14.5 points and 4.0 assists in two games as Providence split a pair of BIG EAST road dates. He scored five points with four assists in a 79-62 win at DePaul and had a career-high 24 points with four assists in a 93-63 loss at Marquette. Council is averaging 8.6 points and 3.7 assists for the Friars.

For us who follow the Friars, there is no need to tell us how good VC is, but it is great to see him get some recognition for the great effort he has put forth so far.  His 24 point performance at Marquette was really great and although he didn’t fill up the stat sheet at DePaul he still had a solid game.  That is the thing about VC, he doesn’t need to score a ton of points or even rack up 10 assists per game.  He is a true point guard in that he makes things happen, runs the offense, is confident, and can play some defense.  And that is why it is really great to see him get some recognition.  So congratulations to VC for a great week and a much deserved honor.  Hopefully this isn’t the last time we see him getting BIG EAST honors… we have a feeling it won’t be.

Postgame: PC Rallies to Beat Yale

Providence (8-4) came from behind to defeat the Yale University Bulldogs (4-7) last night at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.  Coming off of Finals Break the Friars came out slow and allowed Yale to add up 11 at one point, and took 30 minutes to finally get their game going with 31-13 run in the last fourth of the game.  The Bulldogs were led by the play of senior guard Alex Zampier who netted 25 points.  The Friars were led by yet another double double performance of 25 points and 13 rebounds from  Greedy Peterson.  This makes it seven on the season and three in a row for the sophomore forward.  Vincent Council also had a strong performance in the win for the Friars who end their OOC schedule with a win.  Next the Friars will have a nine day layoff before they travel to South Bend to begin their BIG EAST schedule against Luke Harangody and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Not a great game, but a win is a win.  We weren’t quite sure how the team would respond to the Iona loss and the Finals break, and for a while it didn’t look like their response was going to be good enough.  This is the first game that we weren’t able to either see or listen to on the radio, so all we had was CBS Gamecast.

In our pregame we made the mistake of saying that PC should be able to control the boards and dominate in the paint.  Whether that should have happened or not, it was clearly not the case.  The rebounding was pretty even, but Yale actually won in both offensive rebounds and total rebounds.  Not good.  We will put part of that on Bilal’s return to his fouling habits.  With the BIG EAST starting his foul troubles have to end.  We are short on size and him spending most of his time on the bench is bad news for us.  Obviously Greedy is a rebound machine, but he needs another body down there to help out.

Although it seemed for a while like this would be another Iona game, in that PC would just not be able to fully close the gap, with about 10 minutes to go the defense finally showed some life and that led to some offense.  It wasn’t a pretty win, but it was a win.  We were able to finish with the same 8-4 record as we did last year.  Will the BIG EAST go as well for us as it did last year?  Probably not, but hopefully we can have an exciting BIG EAST schedule.  Win or lose we are just happy it is finally here.

PFB Player of the Game: Vincent Council- This was difficult because we weren’t able to see the game.  We wanted to give it to Greedy who had another great game, his double doubles have almost become expected and sometimes it seems like he is the only player ready to play from the opening tip to the closing buzzer.  However, this game we will give it to VC, who by all accounts had a great game.  Sometimes it is hard to remember that he is only a freshman.  But he had great numbers and was essential to PC pulling this one out.  And apparently he had a pretty sick dunk.  Thank goodness for VC.

Links:

Friars.com

Men’s Basketball Down’s Yale, 87-78

ProJo.com

PC pulls away for 87-78 win over Yale

Friarblog

So Long, OOC [Game Recaps]

The State of Friars Basketball

Yale Bulldogs enter the House that Shammgod Built (But Not Really)

YaleBulldogs.com

Late Rally Lifts Providence Past Yale, 87-78

Postgame: PC vs. URI…Bummer.

The Friars lost 86-82 to The University of Rhode Island Rams yesterday.  The Friars led by as many as 16,and the game looked out of reach for the Rams, but a second half comeback led to an exciting last few minutes that left PC very disappointed.  URI had 5 player reach double digits in scoring with Keith Cothran leading the way with 10.  The Friars were led by another double double performance by Greedy Peterson, but had four other players reach double figures in scoring as well.  Marshon Brooks, who was in foul trouble early, never really got things going and only finished with 4 points.  The Friars turnovers were what plagued them in their loss.  An uncharacteristic 19 turnovers led to a lot of Ram points.  With the win the Rams move to 5-1 and 4th in the A-10, and the Friars move to 5-3 and last in the BIG EAST.

So that wasn’t fun.  We aren’t really sure how we even feel about what happened.  Early on Marshon gets in foul trouble so we think we are in trouble, but we have a great first half.  VC throwing crazy good passes pushing the ball up the court, great rebounding, and even B-Mac putting in major work!  Going into halftime we honestly didn’t think this was a lead PC would loss.  We mean Marshon wasn’t even playing and we had run up a double digit lead on them.

We were wrong.  Apparently no lead is safe with the Friars.  A frustrating loss not only because of the 16 point lead that was blown but because once again, down the stretch PC had trouble hanging onto the ball.  And once again it was the go-to-guys that had the trouble.  But maybe we should stop referring to them as the go-to-guys.  We should seriously be thinking about making VC the go-to-guy.

This loss was terrible and that terribleness is only compounded by the fact that it was to URI.  You can say that we were underdogs anyway.  That a win was unexpected.  But when you are up by 16 and playing as well as they did in the first half without the star player in , its a game that you are expected to win.  But there is little use going on about it.  It is a bummer, and for the next year URI fans will have the bragging rights, but next year we will get revenge.

There were three positives in this game.  First and most importantly is the play of VC.  We say this after every game, but wow.  He plays as if he is the most experienced player out there.  He is a freshman and is already as good as he is.  He is only going to keep getting better and better, and at 6’2″ 180 he has the body that will allow him to succeed in the BIG EAST as well.  VC was quite a find and is reason to optimistic about the future even with such a loss.  Greedy was also a positive.  Yes he got blocked and had an inexcusable technical at the end of the game but another double-double performance cannot be overlooked.  He has continued to play well.  Last, was B-Mac.  We were shocked at his play as he almost reached a double-double himself.  He went quiet in the second half but it was good to see him hit some outside shots and put the ball in the hoop.  He is a veteran and we need production like that from him more often.  Whenever he feels like scoring 13 points and grabbing 9 boards we will take it.

So that is all we got.  This loss was a bummer.  We really have only one notable OCC game left at George Washington so it will be important to grab a win on the road there.  These tough losses are difficult to swallow.  It seems like this has happened all too often given how young the season still is.  The three losses we have could have been three more wins, but as always this is a young team being built for the future so these are the growing pains we all will have to come to accept.

Oh  and storming the court… All ten kids.  C’mon really?

PC Player of the Game: Vincent Council. Yes Greedy had another big game with a double-double, but VC was really impressive.  For those of you who watched the game some of his passes were just great.  6 rebounds, 6 assists, a steal and 16 points for a freshman in a big game is impressive.  Yes he had 5 tournovers, but he still gets the nod as player of the game for PC.

Links:

ProJo.com

URI 86, PC 82: Rams have finishing kick

Friarblog.com

Friars Can’t Close Out URI [Game Recaps]

Johnnie Lacy: Freshman to Watch

In ESPN’s Big East ShootAround John Stoval posted a list of the ten freshman he can’t wait to see this year.  On the list was PC newcomer Johnnie Lacy.  Stoval had this to say:

Johnnie Lacy, PG, Providence: This undersized point guard can score with the best of them. He can get the ball and run with it, which makes him a perfect fit for Providence’s system.

Lacy is in the company of some of the big time Big East recruits such as Dom Cheek from Villanova and Lance Stephenson from Cincinnati.

Since PC got Lacy we have been pretty excited.  Not just because PC beat out the likes of Tennessee, Texas, Marquette, and Indiana to get him, but because he really has the potential to be a great player and fits in perfectly with Coach Keno Davis’ system.  From what we read Lacy has left room for refinement but that is the case with many incoming freshman.  What is good about him is that he has all the potential in the world and has the tools to reach it, and he has the reputation for giving a tremendous amount of intensity and effort… which clearly is a great thing.  So it was good to see that Johnnie Lacy got a little bit of press heading into the season, but we can’t wait to see what he can do once he’s out wearing a Friars jersey.  Lacy, along with guard Vincent Council, are the future of the PC front court which has to make PC fans feel good.  It will be exciting to see how their first year goes.