Another down year for Friars
Despite investment in facilities, program has struggled
In Ed Cooley and Providence College, we’re talking about a coach-school relationship where until recently, both sides have mutually benefited.
For every breakthrough under Cooley’s watch, PC has reciprocated with numerous job perks that have gone a long way in keeping said individual who doubles as an important ambassador in place over the past 10 seasons. Stringing together NCAA Tournament appearances as if they were pearls on a necklace paved the way for contract extensions and an on-campus practice facility that in theory was supposed to elevate the Cooley-led Friars into a higher stratosphere.
Lately, Providence hasn’t been getting much bang for the bucks that have been sunk into the men’s basketball program. Remove last season’s joy ride that was the season-ending six-game winning streak, an impressive stretch that ultimately was stopped dead in its tracks upon the arrival of the vice grip known as COVID-19, and it’s mainly been a three-year stretch of struggles that can be traced back to the same time as the opening of the Ruane Friar Development Center.
What has PC received since the doors opened to an expensive ($30 million) yet necessary piece of infrastructure in the cutthroat world of big-boy college athletics? How about zero NCAA berths, two seasons of sub-.500 Big East records – 7-11 in 2019, 9-10 in 2020-21 – and way too many head-scratching losses to list here.
What about the 2019-20 campaign that was highlighted by a blistering finish? Didn’t the Friars establish a program record for most Big East wins in a single season? You would be correct, but it took a three-week hot stretch to erase the frustration that greeted Providence at seemingly every turn during the first three-plus months.
We can play the “what if?” game all we want with Alpha Diallo and last year’s PC squad. The larger point is that things have gone backwards over the past three seasons – a stretch where you can’t say the support from the head honchos hasn’t been in place. The onus has been on Cooley to deliver after being handed the keys to a top-flight building. To date, the return on investment has yet to arrive.
Question is, what steps does Cooley need to take to peak more and spend less time in the valley? One suggestion: rekindle what at one time was one of the true hallmarks of this program. That would be player development.
From transforming Bryce Cotton into a combo guard who became just as capable running the offense as creating his own shot, to molding LaDontae Henton into a 2,000-point career scorer, to placing Ben Bentil in a breakout position where he declared for the NBA Draft after his sophomore season, the Friars at onetime under Cooley’s watch made a living out of taking pieces that were already in the fold and elevating their game.
Three times between the 2012-13 season and 2016-17, the Big East recognized a Friar as the recipient of that year’s Most Improved Player. It’s supporting evidence that spoke to Cooley and his staff’s ability to develop in-house talent to replace departed players from the previous year’s roster.
At the end of a just-completed 13-13 season that ended in a first-round Big East Tournament loss to the lowest possible seed (No. 11 DePaul), it’s fair game to wonder why players haven’t made the kinds of strides that used to happen regularly.
A.J. Reeves should be mentioned in the same breath as David Duke and Nate Watson, this past season’s leading men. Getting Reeves past the hump marked “inconsistency” has been a chore going on three years. The next time he averages at least 10 points in a single season will be the first.
The weekend news of Greg Gantt transferring ends a two-year run where the status quo applies. The exact player you saw during Gantt’s freshman season was on display as a sophomore.
Kris Monroe is a three-year member of the Friars. Shouldn’t he have made more of a mark by now? Getting well is the priority for Jimmy Nichols, yet he still resembles the same raw player who Cooley believed in enough to start 18 times as a freshman.
Then there’s Duke and the drops he experienced in his fieldgoal effectiveness as a junior compared to his sophomore output. The hope was that Duke would be this era’s answer to Kris Dunn. We’re still waiting on that front.
In an offseason that figures to be heavy on soul-searching, it would be wise for Cooley to dust off an old blueprint. A good place to start would be rekindling the methods that allowed players to make leaps from one season to the next.
Remember when Kyron Cartwright emerged as Dunn’s understudy to running the point at an all-Big East clip? A similar type of trajectory from someone in the current fold would be nice to see as part of Cooley’s quest of seeking ways that would allow the coach to hold up his end of the bargain when it comes to player development.