Is This Year’s PC Basketball Team Really As Good As Its Record? Should PC Fans Be Worried?
Bob McMahon, Guest MINDSETTER™
Is This Year’s PC Basketball Team Really As Good As Its Record? Should PC Fans Be Worried?
Full disclosure, I have been a rabid PC basketball fan since Johnny Egan and Lenny Wilkens dazzled fans while playing on the Alumni Hall hardwoods. I am excited and proud of this year’s team, but cautious about the road ahead. My inevitable half-cup empty cautiousness comes from experiencing a lifetime of Red Sox disappointments prior to 2004.
The Vegas betting line for the PC-St. John’s game on Tuesday night February 1st inspired this article and my recent wariness about PC’s post-season chances. The Johnnies were favored by 2.5 points! Say what? Other betting sites also were pushing you to bet on St. John’s. How can that be? PC is ranked 15th in both the AP and Coaches polls. St. John’s is unranked and finds inventive ways each night to lose games it should win.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhile we PC fans are loving this team and their will to win close games, it turns out the deep-dive basketball experts are not buying this PC team as real. Yes, PC has a great record and has quality wins against Texas Tech, Wisconsin, and a slew of ranked Big East teams. But this team is a real enigma—great record with some great wins and, therefore, a deserved ranking at #15, but PC’s “metrics” are weak. Here are some of the offense and defense numbers (as of February 1st) that may give you and the Vegas oddsmakers pause about PC’s future success this season, or make you scratch your head trying to figure out PC’s success to date:
- Scoring per game: 197th in the country at 71 pts/game, just behind Moorehead State
- Field goal %: 183rd in the country, just behind Stony Brook
- 3 pt field goal %: 171st in the country, just behind The Citadel
- Free throw %: 97th in the country at 74% (actually, a solid number for PC when compared to recent years)
- Assists/turnovers per game: 106th in the country
- Rebounds per game: 102nd in the country
- Steals per game: 321st in the country, just behind UT Rio Grande.
Basketball oddsmakers also point to a non-metric factor: PC has simply been lucky. It has beat several teams, such as Wisconsin, UCONN, Northwestern, and Seton Hall when those teams didn’t have their best players available. And while we PC fans consider all of the close last-minute wins by PC as a sign of the team’s resilience and good coaching, many basketball experts view this as plain old luck. “PC can’t dominate any good teams and there are only so many close games you can win in a season. Their luck will run out soon.”
So, how do we PC fans explain the team’s success so far, and should we be worried about the post-season? Is this team just lucky and will its luck, like a slot machine streak, inevitably falter? Have the Dominican priests at PC successfully organized student prayer circles for this team?
Let’s look at some possible factors that have led to success so far.
A Team of Veterans. PC has never had a team with so many mature veteran players who have the experience of this roster of players. The first seven players on this team feature 4 graduate students, 2 seniors, and 1 junior. No other team in the country has this kind of player profile. Veteran players tend to be coachable (especially in running defenses), to have on court instincts that can’t be measured in metrics, and to not panic in pressure situations.
A good example of veteran maturity is Justin Minaya, a 6’7” graduate student who played 4 years in the SEC at South Carolina. He is a lockdown defender. However, he is not being considered nationally as one the top 15 defensive players of the year, because he “doesn’t have the numbers”. His defensive skills need to be seen to be appreciated. He guards the best player on other teams forcing the ball to go to less skillful options, he bats balls away, he dives on the court for loose balls, he yells instructions to teammates on defense. He is likely to be the Big East defensive player of the year.
Everyone Contributes. PC has one certifiable star, Nate Watson, a pre-season Big East first-teamer. But this is one of the most well-balanced PC teams that I have ever watched. Virtually every game, there are at least 4 players scoring in double figures. If teams double team Watson, PC has other answers. Noah Horchler leads the team in rebounds and in 3pt basket percentage. Crosswell comes off the bench and is a sure shooter—he leads the team in field goal percentage (a ridiculous 71%). At the end of a game, when you absolutely need to make free throws, PC makes sure that Al Durham, an 83% free throw shooter, has the ball. In the recent St John’s game, he made 8 straight free throws in the last minute of play to ensure a PC win.
Coaching. In the pre-season poll of Big East coaches, PC was picked to finish 7th. They are sitting in first place as of this date at 9-1 and likely will compete with Villanova at the end of the season to be the regular season champion. This season might be Cooley’s best year of coaching, helped in large part by the coachable veteran players on this team and by a team of talented assistant coaches. Cooley’s rotation of players, his defensive strategies, and the will to win that he imparts to his players can’t be underestimated. All the close wins by PC this year are not just the result of luck. They reflect Cooley’s strategies and the execution of those strategies by his players.
Can PC fans be optimistic about the remainder of PC’s season? Yup. This is a good solid team no matter what the metrics say. And good teams find ways to win. Will they provide PC fans with some March Madness excitement? Don’t look for Vegas for advice. Keep watching and rooting for this team and savor every game. This year is special. Let’s Go Friars!
Bob McMahon is the former Director of Parks in the City of Providence and a lifelong fan of PC Friar fan.