Both this game and the the VTech game exposed the fact that PC is very weak in the 4 spot and has nobody to defend guys 6'10" who can shoot and drive. Big E was tremendous, our guards are many and very talented; but asking Floyd or Sellers try to stop a 6'9" or 6'10" multi-facted scorer is not going to work- and not there fault. Sellers and Edwards are great players who are relentless. Blessed to have them!
When I saw Colorado on the schedule for a game in early November I almost died! Let’s see,; travel to Colorado, time zone changes, 6000 feet of altitude, new team, hostile crowd and western refs. When was the last time PC has won a game out West? Maybe too much to ask of a young team.
English didn't have the team ready? Isn't that a coaches job? On the bright side the foul shooting looks alot better than last season. Sellers looked great at the foul line. We missed quite a few treys in the first half which hurt because this team does not play well when behind in the first half. Like you stated Kevin you can not take the lead or catch up if you are unable to get stops via good defensive play. Also, was it really necessary to travel all the way to Colorado for a non conference game? I'm just saying. Will be looking for a much better performance against New Hampshire on Tuesday. Just read GT's comment. Great insight, couldn't agree more.
I shouldn't expect much more than emotional responses on twitter or in comments sections, but for some reason I keep hoping for objectivity. Something similar went on with the firing of James Franklin at Penn State last month, and the big Steven A. Smith-styled proof point that he needed to go was that he was 4-21 in 25 games against top 10 opponents. Never mind that that typical game in this bucket was unranked Penn State (more a sign of talent pool than coaching) against say, #2 Ohio State. Any program is going to go 4-21 in such matchups. In fact, if you use these three data points: (1) Ranking of each team, (2) Home versus away, and (3) betting odds on game day, the basic math shows that the win expectation for a team in the circumstances Penn State was in was 3.5 to 5.5 wins...for a average of 4.5, which is kinda exactly the same record Franklin had.
In a similar way, emotion and subjectivity of Friar fans is clouding objectivity. I've seen two stats bandied about that are somehow supposed to prove English can't coach: (1) his record in "close games" which treats a 6 point lead in the waning minutes (85-90% odds of winning) in the same category as a 6 point deficit in the waning minutes (85-90%) odds of losing. If you run the actual math on each scenario individually and not fall for the intellectually lazy/dishonest approach of putting all those apples in a single bushel - you get an expected outcome something pretty darned close to what English's record is.
The newest figure is the using the winsorizied stat of away games starting with BE play last year and no Hopkins and to prove that English's (admittedly jarring) 2-17 record is a sign that he can't coach--largely because he won't resurrect the 1980s relics of zone defense and set plays. Run the math (if you know how...) on what any 12-20 team with those full game offensive and defensive metrics would do away from home over that stretch....you get something like 3-16 or 4-15. Teams that win 37% of their games overall and 62% of their home games overall win like 15-20% of their road games. #facts.
The record is quite possibly an indicator of a talent deficiency more than a coaching one, and I will leave to time and unfolding events to decide if it's because English actually can't recruit stars because he's not really a good recruiter, or because the NIL & conference realignment deck is stacked against him.
Basketball--like any sport--is more Jimmy's and Joes than X's and O's over the longer stretches; I don't see the Jimmy's and Joes on this team. Better than last year, but not better than the field. Players make buckets stops more than schemes; anyone who thinks otherwise isn't or wasn't an athlete.
*They can score a bit, have three guys who can go for 25+ on any given night, and another 3-4 that can go for 10-15 on any given night. Not stuck in the mud like last year on offense hoping Joesph can find a way to hit half a dozen three pointers to keep us in it.
*Mela has improved a bit on offense and I didn't think he would/could
*Jones and Vaaks are exciting. Hope we can keep them.
*Depth at the 2-3 spots
The Bad:
*No true point guard (again). Leads to half court turnovers.
*Oswin can block shots, but not much else--and he needs to stop putting them into the stands--that just gives the other team the ball back. And...I think he's already reached his ceiling both offensively and defensively and he's decidedly mid.
*Hargrove is better than last year's back up bigs but isn't an impact player which hurts because neither is Oswin.
*Edwards hero ball stuff when he's the PG is cringy and is a problem
*Floyd might only have appeared to be a good player last year because he was on a bad team
*Same with Powell
The Ugly:
*Defense. Look at CBB stats if you dare. It tells you the same thing your eyes do: no steals, no offensive rebounds. Can't compete if that is going to be your math.
*Small again. Oswin and Hargrove and then nothing.
Reality check: Providence is a really small school with limited donor pool that thinks way more about Billy Donovan and Rick Pitino than they think about us. The NIL era has relegated the Big East, by and large, to second tier status - the tournament "snubbing" of the league in 2023-24 was an objective assessment that an unsuspecting collective fan base has still not processed or accepted. And the city itself is an acquired taste and the school doesn't offer the social scene that most 20 year old big time players crave.
But...there's enough in there if the defense adjusts for a 16-17 win season and an NIT birth, which will disappoint the twitter crowd but it would represent a 4-5 win improvement from last year, which would be an important step forward. And there's enough depth that if Mela, Jones, Oswin, Barron and Davis come back next year we can retool (and add talent and depth at the 4-5) that an 20 win season follows in 2026-7.
English isn't the problem. You've got him and Ryan Gomes - two former NBA players - sitting there next to each other trying to figure it out. They know what they are doing. It's the macro dynamics that are the issues. English should be given time to continue to figure out how one needs to build with the pluses and minuses of being tiny Providence College playing on the big stage.
Providence is a basketball city more than any big schools. The payroll of this team is same or better than Georgetown, Villanova and some of the bigger schools. The level of talent is there, the level of coaching is not. We are playing same style without D for 3 years. It’s madness to do same thing over and over and expect same results. We are yet to see this team play zone defense in the last 3years. I bet you that URI or Bryant with a lesser NIL pool can beat this team.
NIL figures are murky and it's impossible to prove or disprove any claim that Providence is spending in the "top 25" as some homers insist...but I highly doubt they are up there. Where would the money be coming from? High rollers in Cranston? And where are the All-American types that are getting paid the bigger deals? The talent is, in fact, not there, which is why none of our players of late outside of Carter and Duke have been drafted, or made all conference, etc. and Carter is a very marginal pro. Agreed that Providence fans love their Friars, but 10,000 fans per game isn't a top 30 (it's more like top 50) figure. It's not a destination program, it's a stepping stone one. I love them, never miss a game, but also live outside of the RI bubble and routinely attend games of top 25 teams all around the country and there is...a difference. In the size of the players, in the size of the crowds, etc. And things have just changed so much in the last three years....money talks now and it's ruining the macro dynamics. Killing the Big East, and making it really hard for anyone in Kim English's shoes to achieve instant success. Get rid of one Kim English, and you will most likely just get another. Dude needs time. If he goes 16-16 or 17-15 this year, it's actually progress. I'd love to see if he can do that (and I think this team can) and then build off of that with 20 the next year.
You would be surprised where money comes from and yes there are some high rollers in Cranston. PC Alumni has done very well with many of them in NY and all over the world and country. Never doubt Friartown when it comes to success.
Good coaching would not allow for the Friars to sit in the same man defense all night with no wrinkles getting abused. No pressure, no zone, no answers. I think we have given English 3 years to fix this. Is it hard to coach the above? Last year we lost to the bottom of A10. This year we are losing to bottom of Big 12 and ACC. Program and fans don’t deserve this.
No, there are not that many high rollers in Cranston. Providence is one of the smallest schools in major D1, and they don't have the alumni base that a school needs to have a consistently big NIL war chest. That's just #truth. And the point isn't to compare them to G'Town or Villanova (with no real data, btw), two schools that are caught in the same vice grip. And zone? Please. This isn't 1988. The average D1 team plays zone less than 5% of the time these days for good reasons - you'd get bled to death by threes and your transition game would evaporate and now as the Friars you'd be a team with no real PG shifting your offense to an even higher percentage of the time in half court sets. These are unserious arguments.
But to be clear, I love the Friars and hope for the best. Right now I see a 16-17 win team this year which isn't exactly what I want, but given the circumstances, (school size, NIL dynamics, power and talent dramatically shifting to SEC, Big Ten, being part of a conference with no football TV money coming in, an off-campus, arena etc.) I think that we are in a decent spot to build moving forward. We have largely the same attributes and building blocks at Creighton, and we can be just as relevant IMHO if the conference domino's fall our way (i.e. ACC and Big East Merger) But adding discontinuity because you want to shoot the messenger and go to a "zone defense" and running set plays like it's the 1980s....yea...um...no thanks.
Well that’s your opinion and I respect it but don’t fully agree. This team has not been able to defend the 3, the switch, the screen or the points in the paint. Anyway let’s enjoy the 16-17 win season and hopefully the 20 win next year.
Certainly agreed that they haven't defended the 3, the switch, the screen or the paint this season. Frustrating to watch last night for sure. Just kept waiting for the D to pick it up--and then with about 12 minutes left just gave up hoping. Seems like they never, ever made a stop. Was numbing. The big question is: *have they not* done these things, or *can they not* do these things? I don't know which one it is.
But I don't think it's accurate to say he's doing the same thing and not making adjustments; they've changed their pace of play pretty significantly this year, going from 65 possession to 77. And they are doing more spot up shooting compared to last year (but I am not sure if that's a trend, or a function of small sample size of 4 games) More adjustments need to come though...because the math isn't mathing with the early season version of this approach.
And unlike others, I just can't ignore the macro factors here. I hate what the Wild West of the early NIL days and the unfettered free agency / transfer era have done to the game. I fear the Kim English and the entirely of the Big East are trying to solve a constrained optimization problem that is going to be impossible to solve if things don't structurally change. I get that it's fun for some to poke fun of the tiny G'town crowds...and I live in DC area and sometimes go there--as well as Maryland games. G'town draws like 1500, UMD draws 15,000. but that doesn't make me happy...makes me really nervous about the future of the Big East.
I think what concerns me most at this point is that players are getting injured at practices - speaks to the need to work smarter not harder - good coaches don’t let competitors compete in practices - they work on collaboration/cooperation and I’m not seeing a lot of evidence of that so far - Lots of season left but they won’t win giving up 85+ points a game - loads of talent on the roster but needs a better execution on the floor
I have seen this on twitter and now here. That is an incredible stat. I know you are pointing it out to say English is not a good coach, whereas I would interpret it to mean he's either not a good recruiter or the deck is stacked against the Friars...but any way you look at it...Wow. Not good. I wonder how this compares to any other teams in that 50-100 KenPom ratings zone over the last year or so.
Colorado dominated in the paint, scoring 54 points inside, shooting 19-of-33 on layups and dunks. CU also used 15 second-chance points on 12 offensive rebounds to control the pace of the game
Both this game and the the VTech game exposed the fact that PC is very weak in the 4 spot and has nobody to defend guys 6'10" who can shoot and drive. Big E was tremendous, our guards are many and very talented; but asking Floyd or Sellers try to stop a 6'9" or 6'10" multi-facted scorer is not going to work- and not there fault. Sellers and Edwards are great players who are relentless. Blessed to have them!
GT - You are so right! Great comment. Thanks!
When I saw Colorado on the schedule for a game in early November I almost died! Let’s see,; travel to Colorado, time zone changes, 6000 feet of altitude, new team, hostile crowd and western refs. When was the last time PC has won a game out West? Maybe too much to ask of a young team.
Another awful coaching display. I can’t say anymore. Time to move on from KE. Have Gomes try it out this year.
English didn't have the team ready? Isn't that a coaches job? On the bright side the foul shooting looks alot better than last season. Sellers looked great at the foul line. We missed quite a few treys in the first half which hurt because this team does not play well when behind in the first half. Like you stated Kevin you can not take the lead or catch up if you are unable to get stops via good defensive play. Also, was it really necessary to travel all the way to Colorado for a non conference game? I'm just saying. Will be looking for a much better performance against New Hampshire on Tuesday. Just read GT's comment. Great insight, couldn't agree more.
Go Friars!
I shouldn't expect much more than emotional responses on twitter or in comments sections, but for some reason I keep hoping for objectivity. Something similar went on with the firing of James Franklin at Penn State last month, and the big Steven A. Smith-styled proof point that he needed to go was that he was 4-21 in 25 games against top 10 opponents. Never mind that that typical game in this bucket was unranked Penn State (more a sign of talent pool than coaching) against say, #2 Ohio State. Any program is going to go 4-21 in such matchups. In fact, if you use these three data points: (1) Ranking of each team, (2) Home versus away, and (3) betting odds on game day, the basic math shows that the win expectation for a team in the circumstances Penn State was in was 3.5 to 5.5 wins...for a average of 4.5, which is kinda exactly the same record Franklin had.
In a similar way, emotion and subjectivity of Friar fans is clouding objectivity. I've seen two stats bandied about that are somehow supposed to prove English can't coach: (1) his record in "close games" which treats a 6 point lead in the waning minutes (85-90% odds of winning) in the same category as a 6 point deficit in the waning minutes (85-90%) odds of losing. If you run the actual math on each scenario individually and not fall for the intellectually lazy/dishonest approach of putting all those apples in a single bushel - you get an expected outcome something pretty darned close to what English's record is.
The newest figure is the using the winsorizied stat of away games starting with BE play last year and no Hopkins and to prove that English's (admittedly jarring) 2-17 record is a sign that he can't coach--largely because he won't resurrect the 1980s relics of zone defense and set plays. Run the math (if you know how...) on what any 12-20 team with those full game offensive and defensive metrics would do away from home over that stretch....you get something like 3-16 or 4-15. Teams that win 37% of their games overall and 62% of their home games overall win like 15-20% of their road games. #facts.
The record is quite possibly an indicator of a talent deficiency more than a coaching one, and I will leave to time and unfolding events to decide if it's because English actually can't recruit stars because he's not really a good recruiter, or because the NIL & conference realignment deck is stacked against him.
Basketball--like any sport--is more Jimmy's and Joes than X's and O's over the longer stretches; I don't see the Jimmy's and Joes on this team. Better than last year, but not better than the field. Players make buckets stops more than schemes; anyone who thinks otherwise isn't or wasn't an athlete.
Defense saves jobs!
The Good:
*They can score a bit, have three guys who can go for 25+ on any given night, and another 3-4 that can go for 10-15 on any given night. Not stuck in the mud like last year on offense hoping Joesph can find a way to hit half a dozen three pointers to keep us in it.
*Mela has improved a bit on offense and I didn't think he would/could
*Jones and Vaaks are exciting. Hope we can keep them.
*Depth at the 2-3 spots
The Bad:
*No true point guard (again). Leads to half court turnovers.
*Oswin can block shots, but not much else--and he needs to stop putting them into the stands--that just gives the other team the ball back. And...I think he's already reached his ceiling both offensively and defensively and he's decidedly mid.
*Hargrove is better than last year's back up bigs but isn't an impact player which hurts because neither is Oswin.
*Edwards hero ball stuff when he's the PG is cringy and is a problem
*Floyd might only have appeared to be a good player last year because he was on a bad team
*Same with Powell
The Ugly:
*Defense. Look at CBB stats if you dare. It tells you the same thing your eyes do: no steals, no offensive rebounds. Can't compete if that is going to be your math.
*Small again. Oswin and Hargrove and then nothing.
Reality check: Providence is a really small school with limited donor pool that thinks way more about Billy Donovan and Rick Pitino than they think about us. The NIL era has relegated the Big East, by and large, to second tier status - the tournament "snubbing" of the league in 2023-24 was an objective assessment that an unsuspecting collective fan base has still not processed or accepted. And the city itself is an acquired taste and the school doesn't offer the social scene that most 20 year old big time players crave.
But...there's enough in there if the defense adjusts for a 16-17 win season and an NIT birth, which will disappoint the twitter crowd but it would represent a 4-5 win improvement from last year, which would be an important step forward. And there's enough depth that if Mela, Jones, Oswin, Barron and Davis come back next year we can retool (and add talent and depth at the 4-5) that an 20 win season follows in 2026-7.
English isn't the problem. You've got him and Ryan Gomes - two former NBA players - sitting there next to each other trying to figure it out. They know what they are doing. It's the macro dynamics that are the issues. English should be given time to continue to figure out how one needs to build with the pluses and minuses of being tiny Providence College playing on the big stage.
Mela and Vaaks are good players but they keep both teams in the game.
Providence is a basketball city more than any big schools. The payroll of this team is same or better than Georgetown, Villanova and some of the bigger schools. The level of talent is there, the level of coaching is not. We are playing same style without D for 3 years. It’s madness to do same thing over and over and expect same results. We are yet to see this team play zone defense in the last 3years. I bet you that URI or Bryant with a lesser NIL pool can beat this team.
NIL figures are murky and it's impossible to prove or disprove any claim that Providence is spending in the "top 25" as some homers insist...but I highly doubt they are up there. Where would the money be coming from? High rollers in Cranston? And where are the All-American types that are getting paid the bigger deals? The talent is, in fact, not there, which is why none of our players of late outside of Carter and Duke have been drafted, or made all conference, etc. and Carter is a very marginal pro. Agreed that Providence fans love their Friars, but 10,000 fans per game isn't a top 30 (it's more like top 50) figure. It's not a destination program, it's a stepping stone one. I love them, never miss a game, but also live outside of the RI bubble and routinely attend games of top 25 teams all around the country and there is...a difference. In the size of the players, in the size of the crowds, etc. And things have just changed so much in the last three years....money talks now and it's ruining the macro dynamics. Killing the Big East, and making it really hard for anyone in Kim English's shoes to achieve instant success. Get rid of one Kim English, and you will most likely just get another. Dude needs time. If he goes 16-16 or 17-15 this year, it's actually progress. I'd love to see if he can do that (and I think this team can) and then build off of that with 20 the next year.
You would be surprised where money comes from and yes there are some high rollers in Cranston. PC Alumni has done very well with many of them in NY and all over the world and country. Never doubt Friartown when it comes to success.
Good coaching would not allow for the Friars to sit in the same man defense all night with no wrinkles getting abused. No pressure, no zone, no answers. I think we have given English 3 years to fix this. Is it hard to coach the above? Last year we lost to the bottom of A10. This year we are losing to bottom of Big 12 and ACC. Program and fans don’t deserve this.
No, there are not that many high rollers in Cranston. Providence is one of the smallest schools in major D1, and they don't have the alumni base that a school needs to have a consistently big NIL war chest. That's just #truth. And the point isn't to compare them to G'Town or Villanova (with no real data, btw), two schools that are caught in the same vice grip. And zone? Please. This isn't 1988. The average D1 team plays zone less than 5% of the time these days for good reasons - you'd get bled to death by threes and your transition game would evaporate and now as the Friars you'd be a team with no real PG shifting your offense to an even higher percentage of the time in half court sets. These are unserious arguments.
But to be clear, I love the Friars and hope for the best. Right now I see a 16-17 win team this year which isn't exactly what I want, but given the circumstances, (school size, NIL dynamics, power and talent dramatically shifting to SEC, Big Ten, being part of a conference with no football TV money coming in, an off-campus, arena etc.) I think that we are in a decent spot to build moving forward. We have largely the same attributes and building blocks at Creighton, and we can be just as relevant IMHO if the conference domino's fall our way (i.e. ACC and Big East Merger) But adding discontinuity because you want to shoot the messenger and go to a "zone defense" and running set plays like it's the 1980s....yea...um...no thanks.
Well that’s your opinion and I respect it but don’t fully agree. This team has not been able to defend the 3, the switch, the screen or the points in the paint. Anyway let’s enjoy the 16-17 win season and hopefully the 20 win next year.
Certainly agreed that they haven't defended the 3, the switch, the screen or the paint this season. Frustrating to watch last night for sure. Just kept waiting for the D to pick it up--and then with about 12 minutes left just gave up hoping. Seems like they never, ever made a stop. Was numbing. The big question is: *have they not* done these things, or *can they not* do these things? I don't know which one it is.
But I don't think it's accurate to say he's doing the same thing and not making adjustments; they've changed their pace of play pretty significantly this year, going from 65 possession to 77. And they are doing more spot up shooting compared to last year (but I am not sure if that's a trend, or a function of small sample size of 4 games) More adjustments need to come though...because the math isn't mathing with the early season version of this approach.
And unlike others, I just can't ignore the macro factors here. I hate what the Wild West of the early NIL days and the unfettered free agency / transfer era have done to the game. I fear the Kim English and the entirely of the Big East are trying to solve a constrained optimization problem that is going to be impossible to solve if things don't structurally change. I get that it's fun for some to poke fun of the tiny G'town crowds...and I live in DC area and sometimes go there--as well as Maryland games. G'town draws like 1500, UMD draws 15,000. but that doesn't make me happy...makes me really nervous about the future of the Big East.
I think what concerns me most at this point is that players are getting injured at practices - speaks to the need to work smarter not harder - good coaches don’t let competitors compete in practices - they work on collaboration/cooperation and I’m not seeing a lot of evidence of that so far - Lots of season left but they won’t win giving up 85+ points a game - loads of talent on the roster but needs a better execution on the floor
KE has only two signature wins since Dec 23 and is 2-17 in last 19 games away from the Amp
I have seen this on twitter and now here. That is an incredible stat. I know you are pointing it out to say English is not a good coach, whereas I would interpret it to mean he's either not a good recruiter or the deck is stacked against the Friars...but any way you look at it...Wow. Not good. I wonder how this compares to any other teams in that 50-100 KenPom ratings zone over the last year or so.
Colorado dominated in the paint, scoring 54 points inside, shooting 19-of-33 on layups and dunks. CU also used 15 second-chance points on 12 offensive rebounds to control the pace of the game
Colorado Freshmen combined for 45 pts. Freshman forward Alon Michaeli (https://cubuffs.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/alon-michaeli/17998) led the way for the Buffs with a team-high 20 points, shooting 5-of-5 from the line, while guard Barrington Hargress (https://cubuffs.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/barrington-hargress/17833) put up his first double-double at Colorado and the second of his career with 15 points and 11 assists. Elijah Malone (https://cubuffs.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/elijah-malone/17824) chipped in 17 points and seven rebounds, and freshman guard Isaiah Johnson (https://cubuffs.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/isaiah-johnson/17829) finished with 15 points, scoring 13 in the second half.