PC Heads to Philly to Battle Villanova

PC Heads to Philly to Battle Villanova

After three straight solid games scoring 84 or more points, the reality of this year’s Providence College men's basketball team came into view this past Tuesday against Creighton in Omaha.  This is a guard-dominated team. When PC’s guards are hitting the threes and taking care of the ball, the team has a chance to win.  When PC’s guards experience a cold shooting night, they do not have a stud to take over the scoring and take some pressure off the guards.

Creighton has a dependable stud in Ryan Kalkbrenner, who, night in and night out, can carry his team and take the pressure off the guards on his team.  PC couldn’t find the rim for large stretches of the Creighton game, and the Bluejays overwhelmed the Friars by 20 points, 84-64.  PC’s Bryce Hopkins is reportedly still in rehab.  Thus, coach English kept looking for a hot hand in the Creighton game, even allowing super sub-Bensley Joseph, who had a career-high 28 points in the win against Seton Hall, to stay in the game for 21 minutes while shooting 1-10 from the field.

In the unforgiving Big East schedule, PC has to quickly close the book on the Creighton romp and come up with a game plan to compete with Villanova this Friday night on the Villanova campus.

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The Wildcats have also been eating some humble pie of late.  A week ago, they were 4-1 in the Big East, but have suffered two straight losses to St. Johns, 80-68 and to Xavier, 69-63 and now stand at 4-3 in league play. Both losses were winnable games with Villanova within a bucket until the last 2 minutes or so of play.  As so often happens in road games, the foul calls went against the visiting team—in this case, the Wildcats, and the home team stuffed themselves at the foul line to win each game.  St. John’s went 29-39 at the line and Xavier went 19-26 from the charity stripe.

So, it’s unenviable time for the Friars to be facing the Wildcats on their home court after Villanova suffered losses in two winnable Big East games. The Wildcats are licking their wounds and thinking that they should be 6- 1 and in second place in the Big East.

Here are some scores for PC and Villanova against common Big East opponents:

 

 

Villanova owns a big win over UConn, the Wildcats best win of the year.  Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they followed that win with two frustrating losses.    Villanova also played Creighton a lot tougher than Providence and thumped DePaul, a team that PC needed overtime to beat.

Like Creighton, UConn, and St. John’s, who each have a star stud—Kalkbrenner for Creighton, Karaban for UConn, and Rui Luis for St. John’s—Villanova also has an all-Big East player in Eric Dixon.  Senior Forward Dixon leads the Big East in scoring, averaging 25 points/game.  He is the go-to guy in the clutch and when Villanova’s trio of guards are having a tough shooting night.

Villanova’s three guards are all averaging double figures in points:  Wooga Poplar, 14.4; Jhamir Brickus, 10.9; and Jordan Longino, 10.4.   Though just a guard, Poplar also shares the lead for the Wildcats with forward Enoch Boakye in rebounds with 6.5 boards/game.

PC can expect Villanova to press the heck out of them as soon as PC reaches half-court.  PC’s guards will need to minimize turnovers and re-discover how to get the ball in the hoop if they are to compete.  Can one of the PC’s guards get hot and make this a close game?