Mission Accomplished: How Kim English and his staff deftly crossed off every item on their transfer portal checklist

Kim English and his staff made quick work of the transfer portal this spring. They retained the players they had to, identified four positions of need, and filled each of them in just one month and two days after English’s first season as the head coach of the Friars came to a close.

It isn’t supposed to be this straight-forward in 2024.

Providence wasn’t going to find a single player to replace the force that was Big East Player of the Year Devin Carter, nor was English likely to find a center who could bring both the production and calming presence of Josh Oduro.

What Providence could become was deeper, more experienced in the backcourt, bigger up front, and more versatile.

English quietly searched far and wide for his four-player transfer class. The first domino to fall came in the form of Bensley Joseph, a sturdy defensive guard whose Miami teams reached the Elite Eight his freshman season and the Final Four when he was a sophomore. The point guard spot now has Jayden Pierre with a full season as a starting Big East point guard under his belt paired with a senior-to-be in the left-handed, attacking Joseph, a nine point per game scorer who hit threes at 36% a year ago.

Next, English brought Christ Essandoko home — at least in a sense. The seven-foot, 280 pound Frenchman committed to Providence as a high school student shortly after coming to America, but ended up elsewhere. He sat his freshman season at St. Joe’s before putting his talents on display as a sophomore this past season. Essandoko won’t be Oduro (with his experience, advanced footwork in the post and superior passing at the five), but he may already be a better shooter from distance, has terrific feet and hands for a player his size, and is a solid passer in his own right. The Friars were all but sunk when Oduro went to the bench a season ago, but the center rotation will be both bigger and more versatile next year. Essandoko brings massive size and offensive ability, while Oswin Erhunmwunse is likely to reclassify next season, and he has the capability to control games with his breathtaking shot blocking ability. The staff could also have a 7’2 center to lean on, depending upon the development of junior college transfer Anton Bonke, who enrolled at PC in January but redshirted.

Individually, none of these bigs will have to be accounted for on the offensive end in the manner that Oduro was, and it’s unlikely that any will go for 30+ in a gotta-have-it game like JO did against Creighton last February, but through skillful recruiting English has a number of ways he can approach the center spot in 2024-25. The long-term potential of this group is about as good as Friar fans could hope to see.

With the point guard and center positions shored up, the staff went to work on finding a shooting wing and a scoring guard.

Enter Jabri Abdur-Rahim, a 6’8 shooter who has spent the past three years battling in the SEC. The Georgia transfer, and son of a former NBA All Star, hit over 60 threes last year at 35%, made nearly 120 free throws, and did serious damage against the likes of Tennessee and Kentucky. The Friars certainly put threes up a season ago, but they failed to connect consistently. Even with freshman Rich Barron hitting them at 43% and Carter taking a significant step forward from deep, PC made just 32.5% from three (32nd percentile nationally) while taking 25.5 threes per game (89th percentile for attempts). Abdur-Rahim won’t be rattled by any environment he sees, and he should provide a significant boost to an offense so heavily predicated on knocking down open jumpers.

The fourth, and final, piece of the portal puzzle was announced on Sunday night, and it comes in the form of a player who took a very different path than his fellow portal-mates. Wesley Cardet Jr. played in front of an average of 228 fans per night at home last year for Chicago State. Cardet Jr. could have gone to Auburn, Alabama, USC, Miami, Florida, Illinois, or countless other high majors coming out of high school, but he followed his uncle, Gerald Gillon, to Samford before following him a second time to Chicago State when Gillon got the head coaching gig there.

Gillon left Chicago State to be an associate head coach at LIU after this season, and Cardet Jr. entered the transfer portal. The Florida native’s name barely hit the portal before he visited Providence this weekend, and he announced his commitment to Jeff Goodman of The Field of 68 on Sunday night. Cardet Jr. is still planning on going through the draft process, but assuming a return to college, he provides the Friars with the type of breakdown ability on the offensive end and lockdown defense that they needed to complete their portal puzzle.

In a matter-of-fact manner, Cardet Jr. told Goodman he is one of the best two-way guards in the country.

The staff badly wanted Cardet Jr., seeing the 6’6 guard as an elite defender, a creator who can touch the paint consistently offensively, and a high character addition to their program. He became the priority recruit once he hit the portal late last week.

Chicago State’s 13-19 mark should be put in some perspective. A Division 1 program dating back to 1985, they won their first postseason game ever this March when they defeated UC San Diego in the CBI. Over their last eight seasons as a member of the WAC (the Cougars went independent starting in 2022) they were 9-95 in conference play and didn’t win more than eight games in a season. In Cardet Jr.’s two seasons there they won 10 and 13 games, including an upset at #25 Northwestern this year.

Cardet Jr. has put up numbers against high major talent: 30 points against Stanford his sophomore year, as well as 18 against Marquette, 16 versus Gonzaga, and 18 in a two-point loss to Minnesota that season. Here he is against Marquette and Stanford:

His junior year was a breakout: 18.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 34% shooting from distance, and 143 made free throws. He scored 55 points in two postseason games, had 30 in the win at Northwestern, and 37 combined against DePaul (18) and Kansas State (19).

And now, English and his staff can finally take a breath. It would be hard to grade this haul anything less than an A- after an offseason that included an encouraging retention rate, with the infrastructure and game plan in place to land four recruits that were each priorities. There were no reports of losing players late due to NIL, or bigger programs swooping in at the last minute. If NIL hit a decade sooner, PC may not be in this enviable position, but Friartown is humming right now on a number of fronts. There’s still an edge and resoluteness here that seems to be relentlessly catapulting this whole thing forward.

Of course, there will be a number of questions surrounding the Friars heading into next season, namely the health of Bryce Hopkins, how to keep a roster with this type of depth cohesive, and how a youthful three-headed monster at center plays out, but it’s hard to imagine that English and his staff feel anything but great about the way in which the portal shook out for them this spring.

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