Providence comes into Wednesday night’s game against the Jays on a two-game losing streak that has dropped them to 5-6 in the Big East, and onto the wrong side of the bubble in most bracketology projections. In those two defeats, at #1 UConn and at Villanova, they made a combined 11-of-51 from three-point range (21.5%). At UConn, they were 4-of-18 from outside and 20-of-40 inside; at Villanova they were a hideous 7-of-33 from three-point range, and even worse, they were 8-of-18 on twos.
When was the last time a Providence team took nearly twice as many threes as twos in a game? Ed Cooley’s bruising Friars were often on the other side of that extreme. Kim English’s first Providence team has attempted 30 or more threes in five separate games this year, with 43% of their total shots coming from behind the arc (50th most in D1). If there’s one stylistic difference between Cooley and English, that’s it — in 12 seasons, Cooley’s teams never ranked higher than 128th in that category, and took an average of 33.1% of their shots from three-point range. Going back to the start of KenPom’s database in 1997 when Pete Gillen was coaching the Friars, no Providence team has ever taken this many threes.
And as Bluejay fans know all too well, when you take that many threes and they aren’t falling, it’s hard to win. PC is shooting just 31.5% as a team from three this season (277th in D1), and even worse in Big East play (30.5%). Outside of a game against DePaul where they were 10-of-25, they’ve been pretty consistently poor at it since the first of the year — their best shooting performance came in the first game with Creighton, when they were 8-of-23 (34.8%).
Of course, when Creighton travels to Providence, you can generally throw the numbers out. CU has won there just twice with fans present since joining the Big East (2-7 at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center / Amica Mutual Pavilion, and 1-0 at the empty Alumni Hall during the COVID season of 2020-21). More often than not, the losses have been lopsided, too; they lost by 14 in 2017-18, by 17 in 2019-20, by 21 in 2021-22, and by 8 in double overtime a year ago.
It’s not just CU. The Friars are 102-25 at home (.803) since the start of the 2016-17 season, and during that span they’ve hosted 47 different teams but only 13 opponents have defeated them. Arguably, no team in the Big East feeds off their home crowd better than Providence.
“You just can’t let the crowd really get into it,” Trey Alexander said. “I think that (the Friars) feed off of their crowd. Their crowd is very rowdy. My freshman year I got some beer thrown in my face. Keeping their crowd out of it is the biggest thing with them. I feel like they’ve been playing some good basketball lately and I know that regardless of what their record is that the AMP is going to be crazy, so I can’t wait to play there and get my first win.”
Further complicating the gameplan: from now until the NCAA Tournament, every game the rest of the way will be a rematch thanks to the Big East’s round-robin schedule. Greg McDermott said that the adjustments ahead of the second meeting aren’t just anticipating what the opponent is going to do to combat what you did well — it’s also analyzing moments where your team didn’t make the right decision or read based on what the opponent executed.
Creighton experienced both extremes in the first meeting with Providence. The Jays opened the second half with a 19-2 run, including 11 straight points, to take a 48-30 lead. Providence had two separate answers — a 12-2 run to cut the deficit to single digits, and an 11-2 run that pulled them to within one. During their big runs, Providence sent help defenders to stop Ryan Kalkbrenner from burning them at the rim, and the Jays weren’t able to shoot them out of it by hitting the open threes that resulted. Eventually they did, and the Jays pulled away for the win.
“It’s hard, neither team really gets many easy baskets, I think, the second time around because you’re able to kind of take away your pet plays from one another,” McDermott said. “But obviously (Devin) Carter is playing as well as anybody in the conference and the way he’s elevated his game since Bryce Hopkins’s injury is very impressive.”
Carter is first on the active roster in scoring (18.6 points per game), assists (3.4 per game), and rebounding (7.9 boards per game). Bryce Hopkins had been leading them in boards at 8.6 per game, but is out for the season with a knee injury. In Hopkins’ absence, Carter has taken on a bigger role and in league games only, he’s averaging 21.4 points per game (tops in the Big East) and 8.0 rebounds (fifth). He scored 25 points with 10 rebounds in Omaha a month ago, as the Jays had few answers for him. Carter made 8-of-15 inside the arc and 3-of-7 from three in that game.
Josh Oduro is second in both scoring (15.1 points per game) and rebounds (7.0). Over the last three games, he’s averaging 20 and 9, but Ryan Kalkbrenner bottled him up in Omaha — Oduro had just nine points and three rebounds in 31 minutes, making 4-of-17 from the floor. Defensively he struggled, too, as Kalkbrenner scored 22 with 12 rebounds.
Davonte “Ticket” Gaines averages 9.0 points and 4.5 rebounds per game; he scored 12 with nine boards in Omaha, including four offensive boards. Jayden Pierre added 10 points in that game, and the rest of the roster scored only four combined points — all from sophomore Rafael Castro off the bench. That’s fairly typical, as outside of Creighton no one in the league gets less on average out of their bench than Providence.
- Tip: 7:30pm
- Venue: Amica Mutual Pavilion, Providence, RI
- TV: FS2
- Announcers: Dave Sims and Donny Marshall
- In Omaha: Cox channel 216 (SD), 1216 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 621 (SD), 1621 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS2 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 618, Dish Network channel 397
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Creighton Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcer: John Bishop
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 83 as well as on the SiriusXM App
- Providence Radio: WPRO-99.7FM, 630AM
- Announcers: John Rooke and Joe Hassett
- Streaming on 630wpro.com and the TuneIn mobile app
- Since Bryce Hopkins’ season ending injury, Devin Carter has averaged 22.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.9 steals. He’s had an amazing season: Of the 13 statistical categories the Big East tracks, Carter is in the top-10 in seven and in the top-15 in 10 of the 13.
- Josh Oduro recorded 22 points on 8-10 shooting in the Friars’ win over Georgetown on January 27, had 20 points and nine rebounds at UConn on January 31, and his third double-double of the season with 18 points and 12 rebounds at Villanova on February 4.
- Ticket Gaines registered a team-high 17 points as he was 5-7 from three-point territory in the Friars’ win at Seton Hall on January 24.
- Creighton’s Baylor Scheierman is the only man in the Big East to average at least 17.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game this season, though Providence guard Devin Carter (18.6 ppg., 7.9 rpg., 3.4 apg.) is awfully close. Prior to this year, only five Big East players have ever accomplished that feat over the course of a full season, and none since Providence’s Ryan Gomes in 2004-05.
- Baylor Scheierman (26), Steven Ashworth (26), Trey Alexander (22) and Ryan Kalkbrenner (20) all scored 20 or more points against Butler last Friday. The 26 points were Creighton-highs for both Ashworth and Scheierman. It was the first time since at least 1980 that Creighton has had four men score 20 or more points in the same game.
- Creighton has had 30 individual scoring performances of 20 or more points this season, including 11 such outings in the past four games alone.
Providence leads the all-time series 19-15 and is 11-4 against Creighton in Friartown. Since the Jays joined PC in the Big East in 2013, the Friars have won 13-of-24 contests at all sites. The teams last meeting at Amica Mutual Pavilion was a double-overtime game won by PC on Feb. 14, 2023. Greg McDermott is 11-13 in his career against Providence.
Creighton won the first meeting this season, 69-60, on Jan. 6 in Omaha.
On February 7, 2018 Creighton defeated DePaul 76-75 in Chicago thanks to Marcus Foster. The senior guard scored 29 points — 19 of them in a brilliant second half where he was 7-11 from the floor and 4-5 on three pointers — and hit the game-winning three with 14 seconds to play.
With the ball at the top of the key and the clock ticking down, Toby Hegner came out to set a ball screen on Max Strus, who was guarding Foster one-on-one. The idea was to allow Foster to drive left, where he could either drive or get off a three-pointer. Foster assumed (correctly) that if he drove left, DePaul would switch the ball screen and he’d end up with the long arms of 6’9″ Paul Reed draped over him. So he continued going right, in spite of Hegner’s screen, and that meant Strus continued to guard him. Foster got him to bite on a dribble-move towards the basket, giving him just him just enough room to get off a shot when Strus took one step back. And then this happened:
The Bottom Line:
Creighton is favored by 2.5 in Vegas, and by two on KenPom. ESPN’s BPI gives them 57.6% odds of victory.
I think the Jays win a tight one.
Jays 73, Friars 69