The Friars returned to the Amica Mutual Pavilion on Wednesday night hoping to gain a victory over Creighton after a heartbreaking loss for the second time this season by St. Johns. The Friars went to Creighton a few weeks ago and found themselves a loser by 20 points. They were hoping for a different result this time around.
In the first game against the Jays,the Friars lost by 20 but the Crier truly felt they could win the re-match in Providence. However, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Steven Ashworth had other ideas as the Jays were able to secure the 80-69 victory.
Injuries Suck- Kim English has said that the Friars have more than enough to win Big East basketball games despite the second straight season ending injury to Bryce Hopkins. Well, I think after tonight we can all agree that isn’t the case anymore. Before the game, it was announced the Jabri Abdur-Rahim tore his meniscus in a 27-point flamethrower effort by the graduate transfer against St. Johns. He is now out of the season.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Wesley Cardet was ruled out for this one as well. He has played only six minutes in the past five games. The Friars still had enough for a competitive game against the Jays, but at this point it might be unfair for us to expect wins after this crazy string of injuries. It is the second year in a row that has unfortunately been derailed by injuries.
There will be an analysis in the offseason of what went wrong this year, and I do think you have to look at the litany of injuries and see if there is a reason for them when it comes to strength and conditioning or if its merely fluky injuries. Question everything in hopes of getting better. No stone should go unturned after the second straight year of missing the NCAA tournament.
Goodbye Steven and Ryan– I don’t know about you, but I’m done with watching Ryan Kalkbrenner and Steve Ashworth (no not the Xavier Patriot Steve Ashworth) play college basketball. The veteran duo combined for 58 points, 18 rebounds and 6 assists. The Blue Jays role players played quite pedestrian in this one but Kalkworth (if a Creighton fan hasn’t thought of that they are fools) was too much to handle. Kalkbrenner missed some shots early but kept catching alley-oops the rest of the game, and Ashworth hit one big three after another. The good news is these two will finally graduate college and stop pestering Providence fans with insane performances.
Didn’t Follow Our Gameplan– On the Providence Crier Podcast we gave a preview of the Creighton game and what they needed to do to win. The Friars must not have listened to a single word, which I unfortunately cannot blame them for.
After the Friars saw the Jays shoot 14/32 from three in the game in Omaha it was clear that the Friars needed to limit the Jays three-point attempts. In this one the Jays didn’t shoot it that well, but the Friars still allowed 31 threes to be hoisted. Providence was actually pretty lucky the Jays had an off-shooting night because a lot of their three point misses were of the wide open variety.
PC actually won the rebound battle once again but it wasn’t impactful enough to make a difference. We really thought PC’s toughness would win out but the dynamic duo sunk the Friars. It was also prudent that PC contained Kalkbrenner and Ashworth and, as mentioned above, that didn’t happen.
Oswin Cannot Stay on Court – We said in our pregame article that Oswin needs to do everything possible to stay on the court. Consider that unachieved. He only played 16 minutes due to foul trouble all night, with one of his four fouls being a self-inflicted technical. With him off the court, English had nobody to turn to behind him. He tried Essandoko, DeLaurier, and Bonke. The parallels between the bench bigs this year and last year are frustrating, to say the least.
Oswin may also be hitting that freshman wall, but our staff needs to emphasize the team is better with him on the court than off it. He cannot continue to put himself in foul trouble.
Fouls– To be clear I didn’t think officiating cost the Friars this game in the slightest but I do have the issue with the calls and I’ll talk about it next podcast episode.
BOC: I have no issues with the fouls. Kalkbrenner initiates contact and we couldn’t uproot him for the life of us, and Ashworth had our defenders heads spinning trying to chase him. Just a really, really tough assignment with those two working as one cohesive unit.
What’s Next
Friars will head to Indianapolis on Saturday to take on a Butler team they defeated earlier in the season but are coming off a convincing road win at Seton Hall.
I can sense from your post game article that last night took what was left of our hope that the gang that can’t shoot strait, could pull off a big victory. I totally understand. Being there last night, it was clear our team just doesn’t have it and really hasn’t had it since the start of the year. Personally, they’re hard to watch. Everything they do is painful. Pass, Shoot, Dribble you name it. I’m deflated and can’t wait till this season is finished. I have not been a critic of KE for the most part this season but, last night, I watched a 7′ center receive the ball on the block, being covered by a 6’4 guard and NO HELP! How can that happen? Lost a lot of confidence in our head coach last night. People have been questioning him all season. Now I know why.