Big East-Big 12 Battle 2023, Friars Lose: Providence 51, (19) Oklahoma 72

Line Score

Stat Leaders

Game Recap

Providence’s loss in their first true road game of the season at the hands of the 19th ranked Oklahoma Sooners can be boiled down into two different scoring droughts. The Friars started the game down 12-0 in the game’s first 4 minutes before a personal 11-0 run by Devin Carter brought Providence into the mix of the game after more than 7 minutes of action. From there it was mostly back and forth with Providence able to close the half down just 4 despite 10 turnovers and 0 points from Jayden Pierre and Ticket Gaines and just 6 from Bryce Hopkins. Carter carried the scoring load with 13 first half points and looked utterly gassed at the halftime buzzer with the teams playing the final 7:28 of the first half with no whistles, tv timeouts or other stoppages.

The scoring in the second half started much slower for the Sooners. Oklahoma started the second half with 4 straight points to open up an 8 point advantage but then Providence chipped away slowly with a Carter 3, and then 4 points from Josh Oduro with 2 from Corey Floyd, Jr. in between gave the Friars their first lead of the game, 40-39, with 15:21 to go in the game. Providence took that 1-point lead into the under 16 minute TV timeout and seesawed with the Sooners to amass a lead for all of 50 seconds before the second mortal scoring drought took hold. The Friars led, 42-41, with 14:16 to go after an Oduro dunk and then from there Oklahoma broke off an 8-0 run to lead 49-42 with 10:50 to go in the game. Another Oduro dunk ended that run and a Hopkins dunk after a Milos Uzan score left the score at 51-46 in favor of Oklahoma. What happened next was where the game lost all hope for Providence. Oklahoma went for 14 straight points before a Providence answer to put the Friar deficit at 18 after Carter went 1/3 at the free throw line — among a total 4/6 free throw performance for Providence which may be the least attempts from the charity stripe in Providence history — and that game was all but over with 3:36 to go. That Carter free throw broke the scoring drought of nearly 5 minutes but the field goal drought went another minute until Rich Barron, who played pretty well in limited minutes — and extended his streak to 5 of games with at least one made 3-pointer, scored. But the game was all but over and Oklahoma cruised to the 21 point victory in the Big East-Big 12 Battle to get their first win in the series and continuing their undefeated start to the season. Providence drops to 7-2 with both losses coming away from home against Big 12 teams as they dropped a game to Kansas State in the Bahamas the week before Thanksgiving.

Some key stats that tell the story beyond the scoring issues were offensive rebounds and points off turnovers. After giving up 3 offensive rebounds in the first half, Providence allowed Oklahoma to grab 7 more in the second stanza for a total of 10 against just 1 that Providence was able to collect. That led to an advantage of 16 second chance points for the Sooners versus just 2 points for the Friars. While the top line turnover numbers were the same with each team having 15 giveaways. However, under the hood there shows Oklahoma scoring 16 points against just 9 points for Providence.

Jayden Pierre had a rough start as seen below. Pierre was rusty in his return to action last time out against URI after missing 3 games but he had an excellent stretch against the Rams in the second half that helped Providence pull away for their 15-point win over their in-state rival. Pierre was again a slow starter but never got going and had no excellent stretches. His only 2 points came when the game was long over with 2:12 to go in the game. Pierre was 1/7 from the field (0/3 from 3FG) and had 3 turnovers in 29 minutes.

Ticket Gaines also had probably his worst game in a Providence uniform with 0 points on 0/2 shooting (both 3’s) and had 2 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal in 22 minutes. I don’t put a ton of stock in using plus/minus stats to glean very much, but a -25 for Gaines feels worth mentioning to give some context.

The final nail in the Providence coffin was a poor performance by Bryce Hopkins who entered this game off a great 3-game stretch against Lehigh, Wagner and URI. Friar fans have to hope that those games weren’t just bully ball against lesser competition, but Hopkins shooting struggles from 3 continued tonight with an 0/4 to add to the season total of 7/34 (20.6%). Even with 3 games of 20+ points coming into this one, he was just 23.3% from beyond the arc. Hopkins shot 36.4% on 77 attempts last season, so the 20.6% is concerning. There are two more lower level opponents on the schedule before Providence gets tested from the jump in league play against defending Big East regular season and tournament champions Marquette on December 19th, two weeks from this game.

Next Game

Providence faces in-city rival Brown on Sunday, December 10th at the Amica Mutual Pavilion on CBS Sports Network at 12:00pm ET.

Providence Box Score

Oklahoma Box Score

Follow me on Twitter & Instagram @pcbb1917

About Author

Mike Hopkins

See author's posts