PC falls to 2-8 on the road after getting blown out for the second straight game
By KEVIN McNAMARA
Now that was ugly.
For the second straight game, the Providence Friars were out-played, out-worked and dominated in much too many ways in another Big East road test. This one in Milwaukee against No. 21 Marquette was an ugly 82-52 whitewash.
After dancing with the Golden Eagles for the opening eight minutes, the Friar offense went ice cold and the defense kept leaving Shaka Smart’s boys open for some clean 3-point looks. The results were devastating as Marquette caught fire across the board, from its elite shooters like Kam Jones (4-of-8 threes, 17 points) to players Kim English had no interest shadowing from the line like Tre Norman who made his sixth trey of the season in the first half.
Stevie Mitchell, a 35 percent deep shooter who had attempted zero threes in the previous three Big East games, set his career highs with four makes on nine tries. All in all, Marquette drained 17 of 41 tries from downtown. That’s not bad for a team that came in making 32 percent of its threes. It’s also the most ever made against a PC defense in a regular season game and ties the mark set by West Virginia in the 2007 Big East Tournament for the most ever made against the Friars.
Jones, Mitchell (14 points) and Ben Gold (17) all hit double figures for Marquette, which had seven different players make a 3-pointer. Marquette is now 21-7 and 12-5 in the Big East.
Providence has lost six of seven to fall to 12-16 and 6-11. At this point the hope was that English may have been able to lock in a solid core of the healthy players he has on the roster and become a tough out heading to the Big East Tournament. That’s not happening. After a rousing win over Villanova, the Friars hit the road and were ripped by 21 points by Georgetown and 30 at Marquette.
“We thought with our sagging off Norman and Mitchell that we could disallow threes from some of those other guys,” English said, “but we were still helping (on defense), for whatever reason. They got threes that way, they got threes from some failed switches or communication. The guys we have we have to get them playing harder.”
And apparently smarter. Not executing the scouting report is one thing but not knowing personnel and working hard to close out on shooters is a college basketball priority and necessity these days. There are just too many competent 3-point shooters on rosters from coast to coast.
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Jayden Pierre led the Friars in scoring with 13 points but his line (4-11 FG, 3 assists, 4 turnovers) spoke to other issues. The Friars turned the ball over 18 times which led to 19 Marquette points.
The accumulation of errors and the coach’s frustration with effort led to a rare sighting of freshman Nilavan Jotham-Daniels in the first half. When he popped in a short jumper and then a 3-pointer to cut Marquette’s lead to 39-30, English had to be smiling. PC trailed at the break, 43-32.
Asked why Daniels was on the floor to score seven points in a season-high 16 minutes, English said “he brings it every single day and to see guys, older guys not bringing it, it’s like ‘what are we doing? What are we doing watching you not play hard?’ He’s a scholarship-level player and I’ve wrestled with doing it earlier in the season.”
The second half was an ugly one, for every Friar who saw minutes. In fact, it may have been the worst half of the season. First, English mixed and matched his lineups with some tilted for defense to slow down the high-flying Golden Eagles and others in search of some offensive pop that never came. PC scored a measly 20 points in the half on 25 percent (8-31 FG) shooting and made only one of its 14 treys. Throw in 11 turnovers and you could understand why Marquette’s players were polishing their high-fiving in the final minutes.
As these dominating losses pile up, it’s certainly critical to ask some hard questions. How many players are not playing hard enough, or smart enough, in English’s view? How many players at the bottom of the roster are showing they are not part of the future of the program with the transfer portal beckoning in a month’s time?
The most important question may be are the Friars shutting down at the end of a long, trying, injury-plagued season? That would not be good and certainly is not what anyone is looking to do but sometimes losses build on one another and the weight becomes heavy.
Providence will host a rival UConn team Saturday at Noon and the Huskies cannot afford a loss to a losing team as it nears an NCAA Tournament berth. The Friars play their final home game against DePaul next week and then travels to Xavier to wrap up the regular season before heading to New York for the Big East Tournament.
