How Providence's Offense Has Changed and What Comes Next

The Friars have seen dips in transition, post, and screen and roll scoring, while hitting at a higher clip when spotting up. Where can they go from here?

In our most recent episode of The Friar Podcast, I suggested to Billy that as much as Providence misses the superior two-way ability of Devin Carter, it feels like the current group is screaming out for the type of stability that Josh Oduro provided on the offensive end last year.

When most of the sports world was watching the college football playoffs on Saturday, I found myself checking out clips from the PC/St. John’s game — digging into offensive numbers that could further highlight the shortcomings of this Friar offense and comparing it to a season ago.

Some of the offensive numbers are actually up, more specifically:

• Kim English set out to make this a better spot-up shooting team after PC scored .933 points per possession and ranked in the 45th percentile last year. For a team that spent over a quarter of its possessions (26%) trying to score from spot ups, that number needed to improve. It has to date. Now, 31% of PC’s attempts are from spot-up plays and their points per possession are up to 1.006, 70th percentile nationally.

• The Friars have also seen a bump in efficiency from pick and roll ball handlers — scoring .791 points per possession/47th percentile a season ago, to .815 and 60th percentile this season.

• PC has seen a big increase in scoring on “miscellaneous plays” (66th percentile this year vs. 12th last) and scoring on isolation plays (74th percentile vs. 31st last season).

But, overall, the Friar offense has dropped from the 52nd percentile nationally in points per possession last season (.934) to 38th this year (.920).

The biggest culprits come from the five spot (unsurprising considering what the eye test has shown), and also real shortcomings in transition. One of those issues may not be fixable, while there is potential in the latter.

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Oduro was outstanding, not only as a post scorer, but when rolling to the bucket. He often got PC shooters great looks with his passing out of the post, and he was such a stabilizing force with his ability to produce with his back to the basket.

Further, when playing a PC team so reliant on ball screens, opponents simply had to account for Oduro rolling to the basket — both as a scorer and a player who could create for teammates with playmaking after setting a screen:

Anyone else get a little misty watching Oduro again?

That element of the Providence offense is missing this year. Oswin Erhunmwunse has had flashes of hurting teams as a lob threat (DePaul, for instance), but Erhunmwunse and Anton Bonke are too green to kill teams with their decision making, or outside of five feet of the rim.

Meanwhile, Christ Essandoko (who was largely appealing due to his potential as a passer and a stretch five) hasn’t produced and looks to be out of the rotation. Essandoko was supposed to be a bigger version of Oduro with better shooting touch from deep at some point down the road, but that looks to be in serious question now.

Pick and roll/roll man scoring for the Friars is down from 1.182 points per possession last year (an outstanding number that ranked them in the 87th percentile in the country) all the way to .980 ppp/38th percentile.

PC’s bigs score on screen and rolls exclusively at the rim — no short rolls or little tweener bank shots like we saw from Oduro in the clips above.

Erhunmwunse has been their only real roll threat, converting nine of Providence’s 21 made shots off rolls to the rim. That would likely change if Bryce Hopkins returns to the lineup permanently, as he is already third on the team in scoring from these possession types — three makes behind Oswin and one fewer than Essandoko. He can certainly do a lot more with the ball in his hands, and PC got him opportunities following screens a good amount against DePaul.

Taking a Step Back in the Post and in Transition