Be on fire. Don’t be lukewarm. Those are the words that Kim English used near the end of his postgame press conference on Saturday after his team’s 79-65 win over Green Bay at the Amica Mutual Pavilion. The question was about freshman Ryan Mela and what kind of growth English is seeing from the Natick, MA native. “He’s a gamer. He cares. He’s in it…He doesn’t like getting scored on. You see it.” Then English gave a scripture lesson about a passage in Revelations (3:16 is what he mentioned but below is a little more for context) and how he is looking for guys who are on fire and not lukewarm. “We just want more guys to be on fire. Don’t come to the game if you aren’t going to be on fire.”
14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
English also made mention earlier about liking to see that big man Christ Essandoko showed care in the tunnel after his turnover right at the end of the first half allowed Green Bay to tie things up at 36 heading into the locker room. Brendan McGair asked whether the focus in that locker room at halftime was on defending without fouling to which English responded that the focus, aside from a few scheme items, he talked to his team about “a care factor” during the break. “We want to see guys that are in it. I want to see emotion. I want to see who cares the most…the guys that show it are the guys that are going to play.”
This has been a common theme when English has spoken after each of Providence’s 4 games this season. It’s telling that caring and effort and being on fire is what English is talking about especially to go along with clearly benching a couple guys for the entire second half in the game prior against Hampton. One of those guys was Essandoko who appears to be getting the message his head coach is preaching. We’re now two weeks into the season and the Friars are 4-0, so it could certainly be worse than some underwhelming performances in wins against opponents ranked 250 or worse in Kenpom. But the realities of the college basketball world of 2024-25 are that winning is just a piece of the puzzle and not winning by enough or scoring efficiently enough means your metrics (which end up on the team sheets in March one way or another) can suffer despite success in the win/loss column. Case in point, Providence started the season ranked 60th at Kenpom and the Friars have slid all the way down to 81st as of Monday morning which is driven largely by their Adjusted Offensive Efficiency being just better than the D1 average (104.3) at 105.4. The defense continues to be very good and there were some excellent individual performances by Wesley Cardet and Corey Floyd to hold a very talented scorer in Anthony Roy of Green Bay to just 16 points on 6/21 shooting.
There have been signs of growth and cohesion by Providence as they enter game 5 on Tuesday against Delaware State. The offense has looked better in the second half of each game, but particularly last time out against Green Bay. As English acknowledged postgame, the Phoenix aren’t exactly a defensive powerhouse, but it was nice to see 6 turnovers (5 live ball with 1 being a flagrant foul on Bensley Joseph) after show disastrous numbers were put up in the TO column the first 3 games. Even with just 6 turnovers on Saturday, Providence’s 21.7% Turnover Rate ranks 312th nationally and is nearly 4 percentage points above the D1 average of 18.0. There will be more on Delaware State in a game preview article out Monday or Tuesday, but their Kenpom rating (341) is between Hampton (326) and Stonehill (348). This presents one final chance for this team to figure out who they are before a week break and the Battle 4 Atlantis that tips off on November 27th against Providence’s first high major opponent in Oklahoma, currently ranked 49th in Kenpom.
For now, English and his staff will be looking for guys who care and are on fire to play basketball for the Providence Friars.
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