Thoughts from the Road: Friars Fall Flat at Home Against Marquette

This Thoughts from the Road: Standing Around in a Bar Edition is brought to you by Vince asking for the foul situation every few minutes and is fueled by boneless wings at Croxley’s Ale House in Farmingdale.

• Providence started slow, clawed back into the game, went on a second half run to open up an 8-point lead and then went cold and allowed Marquette back into the game. That’s a pretty simple summary of the action in Providence’s game against Marquette on January 5th. It was another slow start for Ed Cooley’s group, as the Friars trailed, 7-0, 4+ minutes into the game before they scored their first basket at the 15:40 mark of the first half on a Kris Dunn layup. Prior to that, there were 4 turnovers and 5 missed field goals. Slow starts are going to be a lot harder to overcome in Big East play and with a fairly short rotation it will be asking a lot for Providence’s core players to expend energy every night coming back from early deficits.

• Providence did come back from the 12-point hole they dug themselves into in the first half and they had to feel good about only being down 6 at halftime after a 10/32 shooting performance, including 1/10 from 3-point range and 10 turnovers. Those 10 first half turnovers were equal to or greater than 8 of Providence’s 15 games at that point. Poor shooting and turnovers were the statistical issues. Providence won the rebounding battle to the tune of 34-28, but they shot just 38.8% from the field for the game and turned it over 16 times. Marquette did have 19 turnovers, but Providence’s came at critical times late in the game and during a run that allowed Marquette to erase an 8-point Providence lead.
• Kris Dunn was not good tonight. Yes he scored 20 points. Yes he dished out 7 assists. Yes he had 5 rebounds. Yes he had 5 steals. But the real killer was 7 turnovers. Seven. Turnovers. That sounds an awful lot like the Kris Dunn we once knew a season ago — the Kris Dunn who averaged 4.2 turnovers/game. Dunn, being a highly thought of player nationally, has to be held to a higher standard now. He flat out wasn’t good against Marquette. Some of the passes he made were mindboggling — and not in the usually positive way. At one point he threw a pass directly to Henry Ellenson. Ellenson — perhaps a person Dunn could be rightly passing to in the near future in the NBA — in fact plays for the opposing team. Everyone has off nights and even an “off” night for Dunn involved 20 points and all the rest of the stats mentioned above, but he absolutely cannot turn the ball over 7 times. Another thing he needs to cut out is the boneheaded fouls. He can’t be taking swipes at the ball when the Marquette player is 93 feet from the basket. Aside from the fact that it gave Marquette two free throws because of the double-bonus, Dunn has shown a bit of a penchant for picking up silly fouls that come back to hurt him later when he finds himself sitting next to the coaching staff on the bench because he is in foul trouble. Can’t happen. The final thing on Dunn is free throws. He has been missing a lot of free throws lately. Since a 9/9 effort from the charity stripe against NJIT on November 23rd, Dunn is shooting an abysmal 26/47 over his last 10 games, good for 55.3%. The leader and point guard cannot be shooting 55% from the free throw line. For the season he’s 65.4%. His 3 free throw misses in this game could have been the difference.
• Ben Bentil continues to be impressive. He seems to put up 20 points without you even noticing and he has been rock solid from the free throw line — 10/10 against Marquette. He also held his own against a big frontline of Henry Ellenson and Luke Fischer. A big fear before the game was whether Bentil could compete and stay out of foul trouble and that actually flipped by Bentil getting Fischer into foul trouble. After Bentil picked up his 2nd foul at the 9:54 mark of the first half, Cooley trusted him and Bentil didn’t pick up another foul the rest of the game.
• Rodney Bullock never seemed to get going against Marquette. He did draw some time defending Henry Ellenson and I’m sure that required a lot of effort, but he had a poor shooting night at 3/11 and wasn’t much of a factor in the game.
• The original narrative heading into this season was Providence needed to find the Robin to Kris Dunn’s Batman. The actual story has played out more like this: Bentil or Bullock alternate being Robin and then a 3rd Friar contributes as well. There have been games where that 3rd Friar is Bentil or Bullock and there have been games where it’s been Ryan Fazekas or Jalen Lindsey or Junior Lomomba or even Drew Edwards. Providence didn’t get that kind of production against Marquette. It was basically Bentil scoring inside and at the free throw line in the second half and Dunn scoring sporadically. No other Friar managed double figures and there was certainly no help from the bench as Providence only got 2 points from Kyron Cartwright to account for all of the Friars’ bench scoring.
• A random stat that stands out is Providence grabbing 13 offensive rebounds but managing just 6 second-chance points. Not a good conversion rate.
• An alarming thing about this game was that Marquette’s guards seemed to be able to get to the rim at will. When they got to the rim they were met with little or no resistance. The shot that Duane Wilson hit at the end of the game that proved to be the game-winner was a tough shot, but I can recall plenty of other drives by Wilson and Haanif Cheatham that looked way too easy. The Friars don’t have Carson Desrosiers or Paschal Chukwu hanging near the rim to swat balls away anymore. The guards need to do a much better job of keeping their man in front of them and not allowing such easy penetration.
• The Friars allowed Marquette to shoot 51.2% from the field and that includes a 2/11 performance by the Golden Eagles from 3-point range. That ain’t good.
• Ryan Fazekas had absolutely no business being on the floor last night. Fazekas hasn’t played since December 5th after getting diagnosed with mono ahead of the Boston College game on December 9th. Kevin McNamara mentioned on Twitter before the game that Fazekas hasn’t been back to practice yet after joining the team in Indianapolis on December 31st at Butler. It shows how desperate Cooley was to get some offensive spark that he would throw Fazekas out there for even 5 minutes of game action when the kid has clearly lost weight, strength and hasn’t practiced. The good news is that Fazekas will have a week of practice to work his way back. The bad news is that isn’t enough time to get back to where he was pre-mono in terms of strength.
• A critical junction in the game to me and others I was watching with was when Providence couldn’t quite get over the hump to extend the lead to double figures. I firmly believe that if Providence had extended the lead they had captured thanks to a 20-6 run from 8 to 10 the game’s final 5 minutes play out totally differently with Marquette playing more desperate.

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Mike Hopkins

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