#12 Providence College Friars (15-2) 50  

 

• Just some quick team numbers to throw at you:
  • PC shot 29.6% for the game and somehow was the better shooting team tonight.
  • Creighton shot 25.4% for the game.
  • Creighton shot 20.8% from three point (5-24) and some was the better shooting three point team tonight.
  • PC shot 16.7% from three point (4-24).
  • Providence had 15 turnovers to only 8 assists.  Kris Dunn averages 7.3 assists per game this year.
  • Maurice Watson, Jr. was 3-16 from the floor.
  • Ben Bentil was 4-12 from the floor.
  • Of the 19 players that saw action tonight, only 5 of them has more than 2 made field goals.
  • I don’t even want to go into PC’s first half stats, cause they were brutal.
• OK, now that those are out of the way, let’s get to some more positive stuff.
• Creighton did a tremendous job bottling up Kris Dunn for most of the game.  They were doubling him hard off any pick and he never had a clear passing lane the whole night.  He helped them out by driving east-west instead of north-south all night but the defense just had him off-balance the entire game.  
• That makes it all the more puzzling as to why Creighton guarded him in straight up man on the final play, especially after he started to get in a groove down the stretch.  It just seemed odd to have only one guy on him and not force someone else to beat you in that spot (like Marquette did).
• Dunn finished with 5 turnovers and only 3 assists.  It would have helped if a single player on the team could have hit a shot, but that’s still too many turnovers.
• His final stat line actually looks pretty good: 20 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block, 1 steal, and a game winner, but if you watched the game, that line is very deceiving.
• After struggling with foul trouble in the first half and seeming to forget how to both catch a basketball and how to dribble, Ben Bentil made some big plays down the stretch, including a humongous three.
• Bentil finished with 13 points and 8 rebounds and his absence was sorely missed when he was on the bench.  The Friars have no big men depth (especially with Quadree Smith out injured) and had Rodney Bullock playing the 5 for stretches against a big big Creighton team.  Bullock almost immediately picked up 3 fouls in the post against the big guys that the Bluejays threw at him.
• Speaking of Bullock, how is that for a stat line?  0 points, 0 assists, 1 rebound, 2 turnovers, 3 fouls.  Not quite what Ed Cooley is looking for there.
• Junior Lomomba didn’t play very much tonight as Cooley seemed to want to stick with the same lineup for much of the second half.
• Kyron Cartwright played a ton of minutes at the point to give Dunn more time to work off the ball and thus harder for Creighton to rotate to double him on a swing pass.  That seemed to open up some easier opportunities for Dunn and get him in a groove, starting with this play.
• Drew Edwards played his ass off tonight, coming up with some huge rebounds at the end of the game.  One, an offensive rebound in the middle of 3 Creighton players to extend a possession with under 2 minutes left, and the other a defensive rebound in traffic.
• Edwards was also the only one who seemed to be attacking the rim with any purpose until Kris Dunn awoke at the end of the game.  You can chalk this one up as another game that Edwards kickstarted for the Friars to make a comeback.  I really like that kid’s intensity.  
  • Debbie Downer Sidenote: He is going to need to work on his defensive footwork this offseason as guys seemed to be able to drive right around him before he can get in front of them.  Creighton’s James Milliken was attacking him the whole second half.
• Speaking of James Milliken, doesn’t he look like Simon Phoenix from Demolition Man with his haircut?