What Went Wrong This Season?

In a season where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, I took a step back and took a comprehensive look at this season. This isn’t going to be a knee jerk reaction article, but more of a “state of the union” to see where the program went awry and where the Friars can hopefully improve now that the season is over.

Let’s dive into it.

Injuries

If any team in the Big East were to lose their star player and potential Big East Player of the Year, how would they fare? Not great. Bryce Hopkins sitting out most of the non-conference to only come back for 3 games before re-injuring himself and shutting it down for the season was the death knell to the 2024-2025 Friar season.

Imagine a Creighton without Kalkbrenner? Villanova without Eric Dixon? That is what the Friars were saddled with for most of the season. Providence did not have the talent on the roster to overcome the loss of their alpha and most teams cannot.

On top of the Hopkins season ender was a season ending injury to Jabri Abdur Rahim, who was playing his best basketball at the point of injury. Rich Barron, Corey Floyd Jr., Wesley Cardet, Christ Essandoko all also missed time throughout the year. There was no cohesion to the rotation due to swapping players in and out.

I’m hoping that the injury bug was a fluke, but it has derailed both of English’s years here at Providence, and I hope he does a self-scout as to why injuries are such a rampant issue within the program.

Every program deals with injuries; however, Providence has really been snakebitten these past two years.

Portal Misses

In theory, even with a Bryce Hopkins injury, bringing in four portal players with collegiate experience should have kept Providence competitive and a “bubble team”. They never were competitive due to the aforementioned injuries across the roster, but also because Providence swung and missed significantly in the portal.

There was only one “hit” in the portal with Bensley Joseph. Joseph can play on my roster any day of the week, as I like his temperament and skillset.

Jabri Abdur Rahim had a few games where he showcased his abilities (BYU and St. John’s), but he was more of a non-factor in games this year than you’d expect a grad transfer to be. It shouldn’t take a grad transfer 15-20 games to find his footing, but that’s what happened with JAR,

Wesley Cardet was billed to be a replacement for Devin Carter’s scoring, and he just never put it together. Cardet is a suitable role player, but the jump to the Big East from Chicago State was too much for him in one year. You saw early in the season that the ability to get a bucket on his own at the Big East level was just not in his skillset. He couldn’t be the guy to carry the scoring load that we all anticipated, unfortunately.

Last is Essandoko. He was expected to be the starting five man and realistic expectations were that he’d be a 10 and 6 type of guy for Providence while providing tutelage to his understudies in Bonke and Erhunmwunse. Instead, Essandoko was unplayable and left a gaping hole in the frontcourt that Providence couldn’t overcome. Essandoko is in his third year of college so he theoretically should have hit the ground running, but that never happened. This was one of the worst portal misses across the entire country.

What most concerns me besides batting .250 in the portal is that English identified all of these guys early. To fall this flat makes me question his portal ability, and I’m hopeful he has adjusted his portal strategy this upcoming offseason. Compound this year’s misses with his whiff on Will McNair, and you have to think he has to wipe the slate clean on all things portal evaluation.

This is why I’ve been harping on English prioritizing high school recruiting and retaining “his” guys once they are in college. He has a track record of success there, while his portal track record is pretty abysmal (for what it’s worth, I consider Ticket and Oduro to be a continuation of high school recruiting due to his familiarity with them at George Mason). I like English’s eval skills when he has significantly more time to analyze a player’s game.

Portalling is like speed dating, and this year Providence fell in love with a few toxic girlfriends who ended up keying their car and slashing their tires.

Rotation Inconsistencies

English lamented after season 1 about the need for 13 dudes, and we applauded him for this. In retrospect, maybe he only needed 8-9 dudes. I’ve joked historically about Cooley’s best teams having a solidified 7-8 man rotation and nothing more. Cooley was at his worst when he had the ability to play 10 or 11 guys, and I think English fell victim to that as well. It’d be nice to find a rotation early next year, with guys also knowing their roles.

In fairness to Kim, English was begging guys to seize the opportunity, and too many players didn’t do that.

Misevaluation of Roster Needs

I think if Kim English could do this season over again, a certain star freshman at Oklahoma would be a Friar. Providence doubled down on Jayden Pierre as lead guy, expecting him to take a leap in Year 2 under English, but it was more of the same inconsistencies from the lead guard.

For what it’s worth, I commend English for trusting his guy, but he probably could have brought another lead guard in to compete with Pierre and Joseph. There is no such thing as too many ballhandlers, and this past season is absolutely more successful with another lead guard in the mix, even if adding somebody would potentially hurt feelings by bringing in more competition.

My hope is that English learns from his mistakes and throws numbers at the issue. I am hopeful he finds a late blooming uncommitted 2025 high school point guard to be the understudy to Pierre (that or a guy committed to a program that is reconsidering his school choice due to NIL issues, coaches being fired, etc.).

On top of that, I want them to bring in a college lead guard that is known for being a floor general. Ideally, this guy has the size to defend the 1 spot in the Big East too, which proved to be an issue all year.

By doing this, they have 3 guards in the mix with a senior Pierre, transfer portal guard, and true freshman guard. It restocks the cupboard in the short and long term.

If Pierre feels slighted by this approach, I question his mindset. He didn’t do enough this year for English to ride with him exclusively. He hasn’t earned that right.

English needs to do what is best for his career and job security and that is bringing in a true point guard.

Lack of Leadership on Roster

I’ll put this bluntly: there weren’t enough guys who gave a crap about basketball. I’m not in the locker room, so this could absolutely be a misread, but the team came across as good student athletes and representing Providence well. That is obviously a fantastic trait, but the “switch” never flipped when they came onto the court.

You want guys who are gentlemen off the court and assholes on the court. Providence had too many nice guys and nobody who was willing to step up and get in the airspace of both his teammates and the opponents. How many times this year did we see a Providence player get in the face of his teammates and hold them accountable? Never? Once, maybe?

Teams punked the Friars too frequently (see Marquette road game), and every single Friar on the court allowed that to happen. I miss the Friar teams of old that had an edge to them and were willing to ruffle a few feathers throughout the game. The talk about Mindset is great, but we need to instill this type of “back down from nobody” Mindset as soon as the season concludes.

This is by far the most important thing that needs to be fixed this offseason. I’m very concerned with the culture in Friartown.

Thankfully, this season is over, and English has the most important offseason of his young career.

Go Friars.