Providence has two landmines on the rest of its schedule. This one tonight at home against DePaul and a road tilt against Georgetown on March 5th. If Providence can avoid catastrophic losses in both of those games, they’ll be 18-9 overall and 9-7 in conference.
In my humble opinion, Providence needs to hit 11 conference wins to secure a bid to the NCAA tournament without having to do any damage in the Big East Tournament. A win Saturday night against DePaul, and Providence needs to go 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play with home games against Villanova and UConn and road match-ups against Xavier, Marquette, and Georgetown.
It all becomes a moot point if Providence drops a “gimme” tonight. We touch upon what Providence needs to do against 3-21 DePaul.
Jump Out to Lead Early – Providence can essentially eliminate any chance of an upset by getting out to a hot start and early lead. The longer this game remains competitive, the more inspired DePaul would play. This isn’t one where you “throw the records out the window”. DePaul is historically bad and haven’t shown any fight offensively or defensively. If PC gets a double digit lead in the first half, this DePaul team won’t show any resistance.
Run It Up – It’s not enough that Providence has to win. They need to annihilate this Blue Demon team. As of this writing, PC is 19.5 favorites. If Providence wins comfortably by 10-15 points, it actually hurts the metrics of Providence, which defies logic. Unfortunately, this stuff matters. Thus, it’s imperative that English ensures PC wins by 20+. A 25-35 point victory will exponentially help their metrics.
I hate this component of college basketball, but unfortunately margin of victory is something that is factored into ratings tools that determine seeding for the NCAA tournament.
It is not enough to win. PC needs to blow them out.
Continued Development of Role Players – I’m very excited to see how Barron, Floyd Jr., and Dual play in this one. They’ve been up and down all season, and this is a game where they can build upon some positive momentum from the Butler and St. John’s games. Attack the hoop, shoot the three ball without hesitation, and DON’T pick up your dribble in the paint!
Fan Theme – I am hearing the PCBC will be mandating all students to wear orange in honor of the award winning documentary Divine Providence. Somewhere, Jeff Goodman is punching air. This would be quite a statement by one of the best fanbases in America. Let’s see what the Friar faithful can come up with. They’ve been spectacular all season.
Prediction
BOC: 82 Providence, DePaul 62. A 20 point win is an unquestioned success. The issue is this doesn’t move the needle from a metrics perspective. To be honest, all I want is a victory to get one game closer to 11 wins in conference, but it’d be a cherry on top to see them win and cover.
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