Milwaukee has always been a difficult place for the Friars to play. Entering Martin Luther King Day’s early evening tip against Marquette, the Friars posted a 3-15 record for road games against the Golden Eagles and hadn’t won since 2020. With 37 seconds remaining in regulation and PC up 4, it seemed like PC would snap its 5-game losing streak at Marquette and perhaps Friar fans would make the comparison to the 2020 team who was struggling going into the Marquette game only to complete a big turnaround by season’s end. Instead PC made crucial error after crucial error late in regulation and in overtime and fell to a struggling Golden Eagles club.
With the loss PC fell to 9-10 (2-6) on the season in which it’s getting harder and harder to glean any positives. PC once again got great contributions from their freshmen duo of Stefan Vaaks (26 points) and Jamier Jones (17 points), but they both made key errors in crunch time. Senior captain Corey Floyd Jr had the ball for what seemingly should’ve been the last shot of overtime in a game tied at 104, but he turned it over and fouled allowing Marquette to hit a free throw to secure the win. Providence is now 0-4 on the season in overtime games and 1-6 in games decided by 6 points or less.
Turnovers a Killer for Friars– PC has actually done a pretty good job overall taking care of the basketball this year but the ugly trend from last season has shown its head a few times this season, and it couldn’t come at a worse time than at Marquette. The Golden Eagles offense isn’t very good so they need to generate steals and capitalize off turnovers. PC obliged in this one by committing 17 turnovers and allowed the Golden Eagles to convert that into 27 points. At halftime Marquette had 9 steals and PC had 10 team turnovers. While PC cleaned it up for the most part by only committing 7 in the final 25 minutes of gameplay a few of those 7 proved very costly for PC. If they took care of the ball Providence probably wins the game going away.
Defense Ruins Good Shooting Night– Outside of the glaring 17 turnovers, when Providence wasn’t giving the ball away they were executing extremely efficiently on offense. Providence shot 50% (32/64) from the floor, 41% (11/27) from 3 and 88% (29/33) from the free throw line. However, PC allowed Marquette to shot 53% from the floor, hold a +20 advantage in paint points, and have 28 points in transition. PC did do work on the glass with a +13 advantage in rebounds and PC’s turnovers did the defense no favors but their defense once again lets them down.
Late Game Execution Lacking– Against Creighton on Friday PC let a comfortable lead get a little dicey late. In the end PC won the game so it may have been forgotten about, but it was major foreshadowing for what would go down in Milwaukee.
With 3 minutes remaining in regulation PC had the following costly mistakes: Ryan Mela turnover leading to game tying and-1, Jamier Jones fouled Nigel James 90 feet from their basket (James did miss 1-1), Jones got an offensive rebound up 4 with a minute left and took a tough 2 that he missed instead of pulling it out and working clock, Stefan Vaaks turned it over with 8 seconds left up 3 which allowed Marquette to tie that game when Jaylin Sellers fouled Nigel James shooting a three.
That doesn’t even cover the costly turnover by Floyd in overtime as mentioned earlier. Against UConn PC made some mistakes but the Huskies truly had to earn the comeback. In this game PC had it won and has only themselves to blame for poor execution late.
PC will have the next few days off before they welcome Ed Cooley back to Providence for the third time on Saturday.
As a reminder the Providence Crier Podcast Live show will occur the day before on Friday 1/23 at 8pm at the Black Sheep in Providence. Come join us, and we can commiserate about the season over a few adult beverages.