Brief Postgame: Providence 88, Cincinnati 92

We were not able to see the first half at all, and could only listen to the second half on the radio, so we don’t feel like we can say too much about this game, but we will give a few thoughts.

It seems like once again we were just unable to get stops.  We didn’t have anywhere near the defense we needed if we hoped to win the game.  Giving up 92 points and letting 5 players score double figures against you is a pretty clear indication of that.  And we knew Stephenson, and Vaughn were good, but what is up with letting Cashmere Wright go off on us?  Unacceptable, we have been letting too many players have their best offensive games against us.

From what we were able to hear on the radio, it appeared the the Friar offense checked out for about seven minutes or so.  The shooting went cold and we weren’t able to recover.  But even with the scoring drought, Cincinnati never made a move to put us away.  We were allowed to hang around for most of that time, but we just not take advantage of it.

In part due to terrible Cincy free throw shooting but in part to other factors, we were happy (or as happy as one could be) about how the Friars did not give up and went down fighting.  We are not huge on moral victories but, the team showed fight down in the last minutes.  What is bad is that they should have been showing that fight much earlier.  And although PC nearly pulled off a USF-like comeback, there was one thing that killed us… BMAC.  We have always said we don’t care if he starts.  Let him start… give him the intro… give him a couple minutes… but do not have him in at the end of the game.  You always hear, it doesn’t matter who starts the game, it matters who finishes it.  When BMac is going to be taking long threes when we are trying to come back and have much better shooters on the floor than him we are just not okay with him being in the game.  We need Brian to go grab some bench.

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.

Postgame: Providence Wins Shootout with GW

Providence (6-3) won what turned put to be an offensive shootout over the George Washington University Colonials (6-2) last night, 110-97.  The Friars shot just over 50% from the field and GW shot just under.  PC also struck 16 times from behind the arc also shooting above 50%.  Providence used double digit performances from 6 players to amass their 110 point total.  Marshon Brooks led the way with 19, but Sharaud Curry, Vincent Council, Brian McKenzie, Bilal Dixon, and Greedy Peterson all saw double figures in their scoring columns.  The Colonials were led by the play of standout senior Damian Hollis‘ 21 points and freshman Lasan Kromah‘s 22 points.

Let’s get right into things with the positives.  First, is that we won.  Always a positive when that happens.  With the win PC improves to 2-2 on the road in their OOC schedule.  Sure it could have been 4-0, but for a young team 2-2 is nothing to hang your head about.  The team was unable to really put the Colonials away, but maybe their experience in all of the close games they have had this year helped as they were able to at least keep GW at a reasonably safe distance heading into the home stretch.  Another positive was the team effort.  We listened to the postgame show on WEEI and Bilal was talking about how they were making the extra pass this game.  It was clear that they were.  They ran through their plays and didn’t take the first shot that came to them, instead waiting for the better shot to develop.  The results were some very open three pointers that PC was able to connect with.  The team effort led to an incredibly balanced scoring attack, reminiscent of last year when 5 players were averaging double figures.  We are not good enough this year to rely on a couple of guys to get 25 points and lead us to a win.  We have seen what happens when one of the players we  expect to get over 20 points has a bad night… we lose.  If we can have nights like last night when you have 5 or 6 players right around the 15 point mark is when we will be at our best.  Opposing teams will not be able to just focus on Marshon and take him out of the game.  We will be able to keep them honest because we will have scoring threats all over the court.  This doesn’t mean we will beat the BIG EAST teams that we play, we are just saying that a team where every player on the court is a potential threat to score on any given play is a good team to have.

Individually it is difficult to say who was the standout (but we will for the PFB Player of the Game) because offensively it was so balanced.  The people we would really like to mention, however, are Bilal Dixon and B-Mac.  Congratulations to Bilal who scored a new career high with 18 points.  He helped out on the glass and, in the first half at least, stayed out of foul trouble.  That actually was probably the most surprising part of the first half.  Bilal wasn’t fouling anybody.  Of course he did tally up 4 PFs before the game finished but he was available for the majority of the game.  And when he is in the game and not in foul trouble he can be a very productive player, as was seen last night.  The other nice performance was from B-Mac.  People have been very hard on B-Mac, and probably rightfully so.  This is where we stand on the whole B-Mac thing: B-Mac is a senior who has been through the BIG EAST.  On this team we don’t have many other people like him in that regard.  He has had some not so great games, but we do not have a problem with him starting.  We feel that he should be starting.  He has the potential to have good games like he did last night.  He also has the potential to disappear like he has for most of this season, in which case you sit him down on those nights.  It seems like he might be finding his three again, and with his size, athleticism, and experience we would very much like him to get his game together before the BE starts.  It is the OOC, so if there is a time to maybe over play him a little and give him a little bit of an extra chance now is that time.  But like we said, on nights he just isn’t bringing it sit him down and give Kyle Wright a shot.  If we can get about 10 points out of B-Mac a night that would be really good… 17 is great.  We aren’t hopping on the B-Mac train after two good games (both of which came recently and on the road), but we are definitely not leaving him behind.  He has the potential to be a great asset for us if he can get things together.

Alright, quickly the negatives.  97 points.  In the post game interview Keno joked that “we held them to 97,” which after a win is fine, but if we had lost this game and given up that many points it clearly would not be funny.  Early on PC had some really solid defensive performances.  We know that we were kind of blitzed by the GW speed and their press break, and they were almost equally has hot shooting the ball, but we need to buckle down a little.  Against better teams this kind of shootout might go the other way.  So a little added D will go a a long way.  But this was the 3rd game in 7 days and there was only one day in between Brown and GW, half of which was spent in transit.  The other problem was the boards.  They beat us on the offensive glass.  We don’t like the thought of giving up 24 offensive rebounds… too many second chances.  That said, interestingly enough 10 of the GW rebounds came from what shows up in the stat sheet as “team,” as Coach Keno Davis pointed out in the postgame show.  That is after a missed  the ball carries out of bounds with and possession went to GW.  “Team” was their leading rebounder for the game.  So take that away and we still got them.

So all in all an exciting game with a lot of positives (besides the 97 points scored by GW).  We will need another strong offensive game if we are going to beat the Iona Gaels this Saturday in the last game before finals break.  The Gaels are a dangerous team but we will have more about them later.  Good win on the road for a young Friars team.

PFB Player of the Game: Sharuad Curry- we were going to give it to the PC Offense but we like to limit it to one person a game.  There were many guys who had great games, but we really liked what Sharuad did.  Like Greedy, Sharaud posted a double-double, except his double-double was 17 points and a ridiculous 13 assists.  It is really great when you can create 17 points worth of baskets for yourself and 13 other baskets for your teammates.  Oh and Sharaud also got into the mix with a very solid 5 rebounds.  Solid game from Sharaud.

Links:

Friars.com

Men’s Basketball Wins at George Washington, 110-97

ProJo.com

An NBA Game Breaks Out and the Friars have more Firepower

Friarblog

Friars Win with RIDICULOUS!… Offensive Performance [Game Recaps]

The State of Friars Basketball

Friars visit DC to take on Colonials

The Truth About PC Basketball

Friars make it rain on GW

ESPN.com

AP Write-Up and Game Statistics

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]

Postgame: PC takes care of Bryant

The 2009-2010 season opened up for the Friars last night with a 96 to 53 blowout win over the Bryant University Bulldogs.  The game was decided about midway through the first half when the Friars had already doubled the Bulldogs’ score.  PC out-shot Bryant and out-rebounded then 52 to 29.  Greedy Peterson led the way for the Friars with 18 points and three blocks, while Bilal Dixon also had a great performance with 16 points and 11 blocks.  The rest of the team also came to play with everybody putting up points.

More impressive than the Friars offense was their defense.  PC’s uptempo pace led to 21 turnovers from the Bulldogs, which led to 30 PC points.  Keno Davis had this to say to the ProJo:

“I’m really pleased with our team’s intensity coming out to start the game and pretty much throughout the game.  It was really by far another level what we brought right from the tip in the halfcourt defense.”

Sharaud Curry told the ProJo this:

“Defensively we looked good.  This was a good step but it’s still the first game. We have to do it over a long period of time before we can say that we’re a better defensive team. This was a great step towards that but we have to keep doing it the whole season.”

A couple things, all good…  First we were happy to see the intensity the Friars came out with from the opening tip.  It was an intensity that was not seen in the early season last year.  We think that there are a lot of new guys on the team just itching to finally play, and it showed it a great way last night.  The team looked fresh, athletics, and spirited.  Hopefully this keeps up.

Second was the play of Greedy Peterson.  Once again Greedy had a really good game.  It was easy to forget in his year off how much raw talent he had.  It seems as though his redshirt year really benefited him as he has refined his skills and become a real threat on this team.  In addition it is good to see what Bilal Dixon can do out on the floor.  So far he is looking very good, which is a good sign for the team given the concerns about the frontcourt.

Third was the night Brain McKenzie had.  Brian has seemed to be getting lost in the shuffle.  He had an down season last year and is being pushed by the freshmen and transfers this year.  But like Sharaud, Brian is a veteran on this team that lacks experience and it was good to see him produce while he is out there, because as a veteran we will really need him on the floor at times this year.  His 3 threes and 11 points were a good sign.

Last was the Friar defense.  For a team that is expected to let up high scoring totals and is coming off of a less than admirable defensive showing last year it was great to see PC keep Bryant low.  Also PC was able to grab a bunch of turnovers, and just played with at a different level defensively than they did last year.  A more athletic team and a new concentration on defense have looked to help the Friars defense for now.  Lets hope it continues through the weekend.

ProJo: PC Friars Open with a 96-53 Blowout of Bryant

Friarblog: Friars Bulldoze Bulldogs 96-53 in Season Opener

Friars.com: Men’s Basketball Season Opens with 96-53 Win Over Bryant in World Vision Invitational

BryantBulldogs.com: Bryant Struggles Against Providence College, Falls, 96-53, in 2009-10 Season Opener

ESPN.com: PC vs. Bryant Recap