Friar Basketball Notebook: Examining the Friar Defense and Early Big East Struggles
As Providence returns from a tough week in San Diego, all questions revolve around the state of their defense.
As of Sunday night, they were 243rd in the country in Defensive Efficiency and the 86.1 points per game they surrendered ranked 330th. There don’t look to be any quick fixes, nor is there one single reason why the Friars have struggled to this extent.
Can this staff get the current group to lock in defensively?
How have they fallen from a top-20 unit two years ago to this current state?
A simple narrative — and one that seems logical enough — was that English benefitted from having the best backcourt defender in the country in Devin Carter and he covered a lot of warts two seasons back.
The flaw in that line of thinking is when you compare Providence’s defense in English’s first year to the season prior to his arrival — a team that included Carter, but had far worse metrics:
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