Bensley Joseph and the Friars return home from Bahamas juggling loads of question marks (Photos by Bahamas Visual Services)
By KEVIN McNAMARA
Whenever a college basketball season dawns, expectations and hopes for any team are always a little inflated.
The sport’s industry sparks these feelings. Hyperbole from a coach, recruiting rankings (he’s Top 50!), pre-season polls, the media fanning the flames. Add it all up and most every fan base owns hopes and dreams of some March magic, right?
It always takes a few games before reality hits and the air eases out of the expectation balloon. Well, reality has hit Friartown, and hard, after eight games.
This 2024-25 team certainly owns talent, in all shapes and sizes. Some parts are better than others right now, most easily measured on a sliding scale of youth and experience. But after five straight guarantee games at the Amica Mutual Pavilion some troubling clues appeared. A 5-0 record masked some Capital I/ Issues that were unveiled at the Battle 4 Atlantis for all the college hoops world to see.
Three losses to teams that are clearly better than the Friars splattered those issues before a national TV audience stuck in front of their sets over Thanksgiving weekend. Problems on both sides of the ball snowballed as the tourney rolled on, first in a not-that-close 79-77 loss to Oklahoma, then in a shockingly bad 69-58 loss to Davidson and, finally, in a 89-73 whitewash at the hands of a talented Indiana team.
While coach Kim English is certainly correct in saying his team remains a disparate one, a group of parts waiting to come together, a more basic summation is coming clear. The talent that this group felt it owned, that the fan base certainly bought into, may not be nearly as potent as first believed.
Of course that statement comes with a notable asterisk named Bryce Hopkins. The program’s best player and most talented piece has yet to step on the floor as the recovery from major knee surgery nears the 10-month mark. Insert a healthy and productive, All-Big East level Hopkins into the middle of this group and the chemistry and talent level certainly is altered in a major way.
More on Hopkins in a bit.
Let’s consider a few things from what English said in his remarks after the tourney’s end.
“Offense and defense are married,” he said. “Each game is a different story. It’s really going to take peeling back and getting to the core of who we are as a program as far as the way we play. It’s a harsh truth. We obviously haven’t done a good enough job getting our guys to understand exactly what we expect, what our standard is, in certain areas on defense. Obviously when we came here and the talent level was higher than it was in our first five games we crumbled.”
English is right about the defense. After five games against teams well below the Friars in talent, the defensive efficiency numbers were top 50 in the country. They were a mirage. After getting sliced and diced for three games against teams with equal, or superior, talent a hefty dose of reality has set in.
Consider the following cumulative defensive stats compiled against Oklahoma (7-0, Tourney Champs), Davidson (5-2) and Indiana (5-2).
| PPG Allowed | 79.0 |
| FG% Defense | .506 |
| 3FG% Defense | .390 |
| Effective FG% Defense | 54.3 |
Jayden Pierre averaged a team-high 17.3 ppg in Atlantis
Those defensive numbers are simply unsustainable against an upcoming schedule as potent as PC’s. Since he arrived in town, English has harped on the team’s defensive effort, intensity and metrics. What he saw on this trip had to be galling. That all needs to change, and quick.
The question is how quickly can this happen, if at all? It’s a fair question due to the fluidity of a Friar roster that’s been brought on by what English has described as a rash of injuries that stymied the team’s growth through much of October. Combine that with Hopkins’ absence and through eight games it remains impossible to know who fits where in the Friars’ rotation. English is rolling with a 10-man team most games, and even sent 12 players into the Davidson debacle.
“We’ve been in a process since our first practice (of discovering) who we are as a team,” he said. “Obviously who we are without Bryce is a bit different than who we are with him but even without him who we are should stand true. We’re still trying to find that rotation. We feel we’re a little bit closer to it.”
While there are certainly offensive issues across the board, the hope is that a shorter rotation could smooth out those bumps to some degree. Players can only mesh as a unit when they feel comfortable running with the same crew, feeling the proper cutting and handoff angles, knowing where a big man can catch the ball. PC shot just 37% from the floor in Atlantis and with few exceptions this does not look like a potent 3-point shooting team. They’ve also been among the worst teams in the country (64.8%) shooting free throws. But there are several potent scorers on the roster, players who should be able to score off the dribble and catch fire from outside. Adding Hopkins to Jayden Pierre, Bensley Joseph, Wesley Cardet and Corey Floyd would change the equation quite a bit.
But it is time to temper the expectations for this group, something that’s become clear without Hopkins in the lineup. Hopkins is simply the only high-level player the Friars own, the All-League variety anyways. I can be convinced on Pierre as well, although his six turnovers against Oklahoma were eye-openingly scary.
This Friar team always had to be heavily dependent on transfers, like so many others around college basketball. There is no set time frame for judging when those newcomers mesh with the returnees but when you bring in 1-year transfers the clock is ticking. Joseph, Cardet and Jabri Abdur-Rahim are one- season hired guns. They need to pay off and be dependable performers, at a minimum. The jury is out on all three. Joseph is off to the best start of the trio but was he ever supposed to be the second or third-best scorer? No. There were whispers that Cardet was an NBA Draft possibility. So far we haven’t seen that guy. Abdur-Rahim finally shot the ball well vs. Indiana but his 28 percent start from 3-point land is significantly lower than expected.
Then there is center Christ Essandoko, a fourth transfer portal addition. While he’s only played one full season of collegiate basketball at St. Joseph’s, the 7-foot Frenchman is no youngster. He’s 21 years old and in his third season of college ball, one as a redshirt at St. Joe’s. The big man certainly owns potential but he hasn’t flashed nearly the scoring or rebounding impact that is needed right now. Freshman Oswin Erhunmwunse has been an infinitely better defender, shot blocker/rebounder but he’s a raw freshman. That leaves the Friars with a massive hole at the center spot, and as the old coach once said, “Potential doesn’t win you games today.”
Here are two plays where Essandoko’s defensive limitations are highlighted. In the first he’s slow to hedge off a screen and never gets his arm in the air to bother a wide open shooter.
In this cut, the Friars had switched to a zone defense against the Hoosiers to slow an offense that shot 63 percent in the second half. Essandoko was badly out of position protecting the rim.
So where do the Friars go from here? First of all the season is still young and many ingredients will improve as the weeks fall off the calendar. They need to get some players going, for sure, but some inherent weaknesses in the roster aren’t fading away anytime soon. One is 3-point shooting, even after a 12-threes explosion against Oklahoma. The other is at center where the Oswin/Essandoko combo needs game experience to keep improving.
But without the arrival of Hopkins this is clearly not a strong team. Competitive in the Big East? Sure. But not top five and NCAA Tourney worthy. The roster wasn’t built that way, certainly wasn’t constructed by the coaching staff (or the NIL budgeting system) without the horse in the barn.
When will Hopkins be back? His parents and advisors are clearly in no hurry to put a young man coming off a major knee injury in harm’s way before it is time. That’s foolhardy. But if the NBA is even a possibility for Hopkins he will need to show out for an extended period sometime this season. The plan is to return when close to full speed and while seemingly close, that apparently is not the case just yet. Will it be Tuesday when a very strong, talented BYU team comes to the AMP? Would it wait until a visit to Rhode Island next Saturday?
Who knows but the Friars should be underdogs in both of those games, with or without Hopkins. He’ll also need some time – maybe weeks – to regain his form and mix with teammates he’s never ran the court with in a competitive situation. In the meantime it would be good for the other players, especially the veterans who’ve shown they can compete at a high level in college basketball, to stand up and be counted on a much more consistent basis.
