Can Providence double up on upset victories in the Big East?
After toppling St. John’s at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, the Friars (8-6, 1-2) will have home court on their side for a Wednesday night challenge against their old New England rival in No. 4 UConn (14-1, 4-0).
The Huskies are riding a 10-game winning streak for the fourth time in four seasons.
Providence started conference play with narrow back-to-back losses before overcoming an early 13-point deficit to top Rick Pitino, former Friar Bryce Hopkins and St. John’s 77-71. Freshman Stefan Vaaks scored a team-high 16 points and Jamier Jones recorded his first career double-double (15 points, career-high 10 rebounds) in the victory.
Coach Kim English’s Friars could have multiple more wins if a few plays had gone their way, but finding a way in the most recent game was impressive.
“If we were 10-3, we would still be the exact same team that struggles to play together at times, struggles to defend, struggles to rebound, so the onus was on us locking into what we had to do … and our guys answered the bell,” English said.
In the second half, Vaaks scored 15 points while St. John’s shot 22.6% and went scoreless from the field for the last 3:19.
English said he hopes the marquee victory can help bring his group together, with so many newcomers — both of the freshman and transfer variety — contributing in key roles.
“In this era when you’re bringing 10 new guys together, there’s always a bunch of individual wants and desires, and it’s really hard to get that to a team,” English said. “(Vaaks) talked about playing three bad games in a row. It’s not about that; it’s about winning the game. That’s what we talked about all throughout (the St. John’s) game.”
Meanwhile, UConn has faced little resistance in the Big East thus far, continuing a dominant season-opening run with a 73-57 win over Marquette on Sunday.
Solo Ball, who missed the Huskies’ second Big East game (at DePaul) with a minor injury, has scored 17 points in each of the last two contests. He was the leading scorer against Marquette while adding a season-high eight rebounds, one steal and one block.
Coach Dan Hurley’s team had one of its worst shooting performances from the field this season (42.9%) despite the sizable win, but holding Marquette to its lowest point total of the campaign made the ultimate difference.
“(Sunday) was frustrating shooting, I thought we got great 3s, so just hopefully we got a bad shooting game out of the way,” Hurley said. “I just thought we were obviously able to do a good job overall defensively, like we’ve done for most of the year. And then just not being able to get separation in the game.”
The Huskies could benefit from the return of big man Jayden Ross, who has missed the last two games with a hamstring injury.
Without Ross, fellow forward Tarris Reed Jr. had 13 points and nine rebounds, while Silas Demary Jr. finished with 14 points, including three of UConn’s five 3-pointers.
Reed agrees with the coach about the team’s defensive effort, but finding another gear on offense as the Big East season continues will be important.
“Defensively it feels like we’ve taken a tremendous jump this year, and the next step is having that killer mentality, putting teams away as soon as we get that lead,” Reed said.
