Providence came into the season picked seventh in the Big East, and is the surprise team in the league without a doubt: they began the year 11-2 and picked up wins over a pair of top 15 teams in Wisconsin and Marquette along the way. New coach Kim English’s first Friars team has done it in much the same way Ed Cooley did during his time as head coach — with tough, physical, defense-first play.
“They’re the most physical team that we will have faced,” Greg McDermott said on Thursday. “Everything they do starts with physicality. (Coach English) brought a couple guys with him that were at his previous stop, and they understand what he wants.”
Their defense ranks sixth in the country in adjusted efficiency, giving up just 91.4 points per 100 possessions. It’s been even better in three Big East games, as they’ve held opponents to 89.2 in those games. They don’t force a ton of turnovers (17.8% of opponents possessions, 166th in D1) and don’t get a lot of steals (8.4% of opponents possessions, 265th). What they do is simply guard really, really well at all five positions. Their opponents have an effective field goal percentage of just 42.5%, fourth-lowest in D1, and have made just 30.4% of three-pointers, 24th-lowest.
They’re even better inside, where opponents have made only 41.1% of two-pointers, over nine percentage points lower than the D1 average of 50.2%. That’s thanks largely to great rim protection, as the Friars have blocked 13.6% of opponent’s shots, 27th most in the country. The Friars rank first in the Big East and 12th in the nation in blocked shots, averaging 5.8 blocks per game.
Because their physical style suffocates teams, opponents generally have to resort to one-on-one iso plays to create offense. Providence’s opponents have an assist on only 36.2% of made baskets, which is third-lowest in the country.
But the team Creighton will see on Saturday is a pretty different one than the team who rolled up those awesome defensive numbers. How different remains to be seen. On Wednesday night, unanimous preseason First Team All-Big East star Bryce Hopkins tore his ACL and is out for the rest of the season. To say it’s a devastating loss is underselling it; the Friars don’t just have to replace his production, they have to remake the DNA of their team. He averaged 15.5 points and 8.6 rebounds per game, and over the last four games had been even better (16.5 points and 10.2 boards). A lot of what the Friars did was keyed around Hopkins’ ability to both score and create for others. He took 26.6% of his team’s shots when he was on the floor, which was a lot, as he played 81.8% of available minutes.
Creighton knows first-hand about Hopkins’ talent. In the meeting in Omaha a year ago, he had 20 points and 10 rebounds, and made 7-of-8 from the line; in Rhode Island he had 20 points and nine rebounds.
Combined with guard Devin Carter, the Friars had a one-two combo as good as anyone in the league. Carter averages 16.2 points, 8.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game, and is one of the league’s best defenders. But now Carter has to be the alpha scorer every night, rather than a tag-team partner with another star. How he fares under that pressure could dictate how Providence’s season goes from here.
Fortunately, Carter is a tremendous player in his own right. He leads the Big East in defensive rebounding (and is 16th nationally) at 7.1 per game. He’s seventh in the league in scoring, third in three-point shooting percentage (38.8%) and fourth in overall rebounding. And in two wins over Marquette and Butler to start Big East play, he averaged 23.0 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 3.0 assists while shooting 56% (14-25) from the field, including 50% (9-18) from three-point territory.
“He wins on point of attack a lot on ball screens,” McDermott said of Carter defensively. “He’s really hard to screen and he’s physical enough and quick enough that he can keep it out of your hands. He’s also very physical against the drive.I would guess he’s going to spend some time on Trey at the start of the game so our ability to screen him is going to be really important, to get get Trey loose a little so he can get downhill and then make some reads.”
There’s also the domino effect of everyone else in the rotation now being forced to take on a bigger role. 6’9″ Josh Oduro, a grad transfer from George Mason who came with new coach Kim English, is third on the team in both scoring (14.7 points) and rebounding (6.8) per game. His shooting percentage ranks fourth in the Big East at 59.4%, and he’s scored in double figures in all but one game this season. One such game came in Hopkins’ absence on Wednesday, where he scored 23 points.
“They will only have had a couple days to figure out how to play without Bryce,” McDermott said. “Everybody in the league is sick about that. He’s one of the best players in our conference and you just hate to see that happen. Obviously it was difficult last night mid-game to get a feel for what what they were going to do and how they were going to do it. But we know Oduro is really good down low, and we know Carter is one of the best guards in the league so they they’ve got plenty of pieces.”
Offense likely won’t be their biggest issue sans Hopkins. His rebounding will be toughest to replace; the roster without Hopkins is guard-heavy and features just two players taller than 6’7″ among their key rotation — the 6’9″ Oduro and another George Mason transfer, Davonte “Ticket” Gaines, who stands 6’7″. Gaines is averaging 8.4 points and 4.0 rebounds per game, and is going to have to pick up the slack on the boards for the Friars to succeed. Because outside of those two, the rebounding duties will have to be by committee, and by players who haven’t proven it at the D1 level yet.
For the Jays, their biggest problem over the first three Big East games — turnovers — will be important to clean up on Saturday.
“It’s been a little bit of everything. We traveled a couple times. Against Villanova here, we had a couple of goofy handoffs with guys that have been around a long time, mistakes they don’t make very often,” McDermott said. “It’s the live-ball ones we have to clean up. If you travel or you get a shot clock violation, that’s one thing, but it’s the live ball you have to be careful. It starts with not making passes on the move and not taking quite as many chances.”
McDermott said after he watched film of the Georgetown game, he felt the team got what they were looking for offensively in the first half — but the players’ decision making was a second late.
“By the time we tried to deliver the pass, the defense had adjusted,” he said. “The timing of passes in our offense is so important. We have to understand if you miss your opportunity, you probably have to pass on it, make a different pass and keep the basketball moving. This stuff hadn’t been a problem with this team, and all of a sudden it’s cropped up. Hopefully it’s in our past.”
Baylor Scheierman agreed. “We were just kind of overcomplicating things and trying to do too much,” he said on Thursday. “In the second half at Georgetown, we really moved the ball well and moved without the ball too. We dribbled the ball a lot in the first half and kind of just overcomplicated things, we were trying to do a little too much. I think that’s kind of what led to those first-half turnovers.”
- Tip: 1:00pm
- Venue: CHI Health Center Omaha
- TV: FS1
- Announcers: Matt Schumacker and Nick Bahe
- In Omaha: Cox channel 78 (SD), 1078 (HD); CenturyLink Prism channel 620 (SD), 1620 (HD)
- Outside Omaha: FS1 Channel Finder
- Satellite: DirecTV channel 219, Dish Network channel 150
- Cable Cutters: Available on all major streaming platforms
- Streaming on the Fox Sports app and website
- Creighton Radio: 1620AM, 101.9FM
- Announcers: John Bishop and Taylor Stormberg
- Streaming on 1620TheZone.com and the 1620 The Zone mobile app
- Simulcast on SiriusXM channel 81 and on the SXM app
- Providence Radio: WPRO-99.7 FM/630 AM in Rhode Island
- Announcers: John Rooke and Joe Hassett
- Streaming on 630WPRO.com and the TuneIn app
- Providence comes into Saturday’s game ranked 23rd in both polls. Unbelievably, this is the first time they’ve been ranked for at least one week in three straight seasons since 1976-1978.
- The Friars are 11-0 this season when scoring 71 or more points, and 5-0 when hitting 10 or more threes in a game.
- Providence was defeated by Seton Hall 61-57 on Wednesday. The Friars fell to 11-3 overall and 2-1 in Big East play. Graduate student Josh Oduro led the way with a game-high 23 points. Junior Devin Carter finished with a double-double, tacking on 10 points and 10 rebounds along with six assists.
- With a made three-pointer on Saturday, Creighton would extend their streak to 1,000 consecutive games with at least one made trifecta. That’s the 10th longest streak in the nation. Their last game without a three-pointer came at Illinois State on Feb. 20, 1993, when the Jays were 0-for-5. Their last win without making a three-point basket came on March 3, 1991 when the Jays went 0-for-2 from three-point range in a 71-66 win over Southern Illinois in the championship game of the MVC Tournament.
- During Creighton’s current streak of 999 straight games with a three-pointer, the Jays have drained 7,937 trifectas, an average of 7.94 treys per game. That’s not surprising since during the streak, Creighton has made exactly seven three-pointers 147 times, more than any figure. Only five times in the streak has Creighton made just one three-pointer, but on 291 occasions the Bluejays have made 10 or more trifectas, including three games of 20 or more.
- Creighton is the nation’s only team in the top 25 of the NET with three or more true road wins this season. Additionally, Creighton is one of three Big East teams with a road win in league play thus far. Villanova has two (at Creighton and at DePaul), Creighton has one (at Georgetown) and Seton Hall has one (at Providence).
Providence leads the all-time series 19-14 but Creighton leads 7-6 in Omaha. Since the Jays joined PC in the Big East in 2013, the Friars have won 13-of-23 contests at all sites. In the last meeting, PC snapped CU’s eight-game win streak in double-overtime on Feb. 14, 2023 in Friartown.
The last four meetings in Omaha have been decided by a total of 20 points.
On January 6, 2010, Dana Altman’s final Bluejay squad beat Drake 73-69. A massive blizzard kept most of the fans at home, and at the under-12 timeout, PA Announcer Jake Ryan invited fans in the upper bowl to move down to open seats in the lower bowl — creating a gold rush of sorts. The atmosphere went from quiet to rowdy in a big hurry. From our recap the next day:
“The offense, once again, stalled at the exact same time the defense started giving up easy baskets. With 8:56 to play, Creighton led 60-48. Over the next five minutes, Drake chipped away, slowly cutting into the lead, and with 3:21 to go it was 64-60 Creighton. A maddening series of missed free throws allowed Drake to further chip away, and the lead was just 71-67 with 17 seconds to play. What happened next was completely inexplicable, but I’ll do my best to explain it.
Drake inbounded the ball, and came upcourt. Josh Young drove into the lane and hit a layup to make it 71-69, and instead of handing the ball to Creighton to inbound, the referee under the basket blew his whistle. Timeout Drake, right? Well, Drake didn’t have any timeouts to call. When the refs didn’t immediately whistle their bench for a Technical Foul, the fans blew up into an uproar. How can you call a timeout you don’t have and not get T’d up?
Apparently, the referee under the basket anticipated Drake would WANT to call a timeout given the time and score, so he blew his whistle. Except Drake coach Mark Phelps, knowing they didn’t have a timeout, didn’t call one. So…it was an inadvertent whistle. Wait, it gets better.
There were several players waiting at the scorers table to check in on the next dead ball, and upon hearing the whistle, the scorers table sent them into the game. Problem was, without an actual timeout being called, the players couldn’t check in. So now the refs are trying not only to explain their inadvertent whistle to the coaches, they’re trying to sort out the mess of players who were now in the game who shouldn’t be. Meanwhile, the fans are in an uproar, not realizing it was an inadvertent whistle at the heart of this fiasco, not understanding why a T wasn’t called. And in the midst of this circus, Drake is getting the full two-minute timeout the refs assumed they wanted in the first place, but couldn’t grant them. But wait, it gets better yet.
Upon sorting out the mess, Dana Altman realizes he doesn’t have Cavel Witter, a superior free throw shooter, in the game for Antoine Young, who’s been struggling, because the refs had called off the subs (of which Witter was one). So he calls a :30 timeout to get Cavel in.
And with that finally sorted out, Creighton inbounds the ball with 11 seconds remaining, but their primary ballhandlers are well-covered so the pass goes to Kenny Lawson…who immediately finds himself trapped in the corner. Instead of calling timeout, he panics and throws the ball toward the other end of the court, where it is intercepted by Drake’s Ryan Wedel, who shoots and misses a layup. Josh Young rebounds the ball and HE misses a layup. Finally Cavel Witter grabs the rebound for Creighton and is fouled. Witter sinks both free throws, and Creighton wins 73-69.
Underrated moment: Dana Altman calling the :30 timeout after the referee fiasco to get Cavel into the game. Why is that important? All he did was grab the game-clinching rebound AND sink the game-clinching free throws.”
The Bottom Line:
KenPom predicts a nine-point Bluejay win while Vegas oddsmakers favor the Jays by 10.5. ESPN’s BPI gives the Jays an 89.3% chance of victory.
The first game without Hopkins in the lineup makes this a hard one to prognosticate, but the Jays should get the win here.
Creighton 72, Providence 64