Sure, let’s throw a New Year’s Eve wild card on the pile of things that can happen when the Golden Eagles play the Friars.
#8 Marquette Golden Eagles (11-2, 2-0 Big East) at Providence Friars (7-6, 1-1 Big East)
Date: Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Time: 5pm Central
Location: Amica Mutual Pavilion, Providence, Rhode Island
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 20.3 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.4 apg
Marquette Injury Update: Junior guard Sean Jones remains out while recovering from ACL surgery in January.
Providence Stats Leaders
Points: Jayden Pierre, 12.9 ppg
Rebounds: Oswin Erhunmwunse, 4.8 rpg
Assists: Bensley Joseph, 3.2 apg
Providence Injury Update: Bryce Hopkins made his season debut on December 3rd after missing PC’s first eight games while recovering from an ACL tear back in January. He played in three games, but has now missed each of PC’s last two games with knee soreness. That last missed game was back on December 20th, so it’s hard to say what his status is here. In the three games he played, Hopkins averaged 17.0 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and a steal. As you can see, that would make him the team leader in points and rebounds… but there’s no guarantee that we’ll see Hopkins in action against the Golden Eagles.
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #10
Providence: #77
Game Projection: Marquette has a 70% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 73-67.
This Season So Far: I think we can safely say that Providence head coach Kim English is not particularly thrilled with how his second season in Rhode Island is going. It went sideways on them nearly immediately, as the Friars were trailing Central Connecticut 53-49 with less than four minutes to go in their season opener. They won, but in game #3 of the season, Hampton went on a 16-0 first half run to lead 30-22 at intermission, and the Friars had to make seven stops in a row in the final seven minutes to end up with a nine point win. Their 14 point win against a team coached by a sports talk radio host wasn’t even that comfortable, as PC led 62-58 with seven minutes left.
After a 5-0 start that just made everyone say “yeah, but, I have questions,” Providence went to Battle 4 Atlantis and got squeaked by Oklahoma, gave up a 16-3 run to fall behind 27-8 to Davidson and never recovered, and then got clowned by an Indiana team that was itself coming off two clownings at the hands of Louisville and Gonzaga.
Then Bryce Hopkins finally made his season debut after tearing his ACL back in January. Can’t rush these things, maybe Providence’s problems were all because the roster was, kind of, maybe, in need of a shining star like Hopkins to guide them. Hopkins puts up 16/5/4 in 26 minutes, and Providence beats a BYU team that had been flirting with the AP top 25 by 19 points. Okay! Things are looking up!
And then Providence got outscored 31-17 in the final 14 minutes on the road against Rhode Island and lost their in-state rivalry game. Hopkins had 16/8/2 and three steals in 30 minutes, so I’m not really sure it was anything close to his fault, that’s for sure.
And then Providence blew a 56-48 lead with less than four minutes left and needed a three from Jayden Pierre to get themselves to overtime against DePaul. Okay, that’s not fair, Pierre’s bucket was with 57 seconds left, Providence made a stop after that and had a chance to win it in regulation. Still shouldn’t have happened anyway, and Hopkins had 19/10/3 in that one. Should he have taken 19 shots? Who can say for certain, but again: He’s not the problem with their struggles in a win against a frisky DePaul team.
And then Hopkins’ knee was bothering him and St. Bonaventure shoved Providence into a custodial closet at the Mohegan Sun Casino Arena. And then they scored the first bucket of the second half to take a 15 point lead against St. John’s at home, watched that lead go bye-bye with 7:25 to play, held a three point advantage as the clock rolled under five minutes to go, got a three-pointer from Bensley Joseph to tie the game at 70 with twenty seconds left, and then got beat by a Zuby Ejiofor putback at the horn.
What a fun time in Friartown.
Tempo Free Fun: We have to dice up this Providence season so far in a multitude of ways. The first is just straight forward: The Friars are worse than they were expected to be this season. When I did my Where Are We Now? article on the Big East, PC ended up with the second biggest decline in the league, with only Seton Hall’s headscratching failures beating them out. Providence was picked to finish sixth in the Big East this season in the coaches poll, and it’s clearly going to take a bit of heavy lifting for them in league play to make that happen. Using BartTorvik.com’s computer rankings, the Friars are #91 in the country and the second worst team in the Big East, again saved by only Shaheen Holloway’s Pirates. PC has the #138 ranked offensive efficiency in the country and the #69 defensive efficiency.
I mention those rankings there because we have to slice this season as I said earlier: Before Hopkins, With Hopkins, After Hopkins.
Before Hopkins got on the floor (8 games):
Torvik: #155, worst in the Big East
Offense: #224
Defense: #110
With Hopkins on the floor (3 games):
Torvik: #29
Offense: #94
Defense: #20, best in the Big East
After Hopkins left the lineup again (2 games):
Torvik: #82
Offense: #58
Defense: #151
It’s not a surprise to Marquette fans that have been paying attention that Bryce Hopkins can make a difference for Providence. In his one game against MU last season, which was a PC win at the AMP, Hopkins had what amounted to a bad game with 11 points and nine rebounds. The year before? 29 & 23 plus three steals in a double overtime win at the AMP, 19 & 10 and four assists in an eight point loss in Milwaukee. If Hopkins benefited from Providence sitting idle since December 20th and has that knee back in shape to play, he’s going to put up numbers against Marquette. That kind of gravitational pull will allow everyone else in a Friar uniform to be a little bit better, and that’s how you pull an upset of a top 10 ranked team at home.
If Hopkins doesn’t play….. Providence is bad. Even if you want to argue that they’ve figured out some things on the offensive end of the floor since their rough start to the season, the fact of the matter is that the defense is notably worse in the last two games since Hopkins went back to wearing warmups and sitting on the bench. It’ll be up to Shaka Smart and his staff to figure out exactly how to go about attacking the Friars, but it’s hard to be particularly worried about a sub-100 defense trying to slow down Kam Jones and MU’s other weapons.
As for the other end of the court, well, it seems that Marquette’s most likely path to victory lies with merely making Providence do a thing that they tend to do anyway. The Friars don’t really have one particular player that’s sloppy with the ball handling, although Bensley Joseph, who is ostensibly their point guard given his team lead in both raw assist average and assist rate, is sneaking past that “anything over 20% is not what you want” barrier. As a team, though: Bad. The Friars rank #252 in the country in coughing up the ball according to KenPom.com, with offensive possessions ending with the ball going the other way nearly 19% of the time. More than half of that turnover rate comes by way of steals, so if you want to go ahead and find yourself a favorable “Chase Ross steals” prop bet, it’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.
Providence doesn’t balance out that problem by generating turnovers on defense, either. They’re one of the 40 worst teams in the country in that department per KenPom, and so a lot of their defensive woes come purely because of the fact that they will let you get a shot up 85% of the time. This is the catch: Providence is actually pretty good at forcing bad shots. #16 in the country in effective field goal percentage defense, #25 in the country in two-point shooting percentage defense. I’m hesitant to give them a lot of credit for being #44 in three-point shooting defense, but 1) teams shoot less 30% against the Friars and 2) they are one of the best in the country (#24) in limiting the rate of three-point attempts against them.
There might be some “they don’t block shots well” in there, though. If you’re not concerned about a rim protector, you’re more likely to attack the rim, right? Since PC is #232 in the country per KenPom in shot blocking, go at the rim and try to get those high percentage layups as your shot attempts. One catch: Oswin Erhunmwunse does have a block rate of 8% right now, and if he had enough minutes to qualify, that would be a top 70 in the country number. The 6’10” freshman big man from Nigeria started PC’s first three games, but didn’t crack 17 minutes in any of them. He’s started just twice since then, and his season high in minutes came with 20 against St. Bonaventure. Yes, he’s a threat to block shots at 1.1 per game in 13.8 minutes on average….. but he’s also foul prone to the tune of 6.7 per 40 minutes this year. That number is up to 8.8 in PC’s two Big East games and 12.2 in their pair of KenPom’s top 50 contests. There’s value in challenging Erhunmwunse because you might be able to play him out of the game.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 8-2, with wins in three of the last four games.
Providence Last 10 Games: 4-6, with losses in their last two, three of the last four, and six of the last eight.
All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 24-15.
Current Streak: Marquette picked up a 79-68 victory in the 2024 Big East tournament semifinals to take a 7-6 edge in the last 13 meetings after winning the second two contests last season.
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