From Heartbreak to Hard Defense: Providence Looks to Reset vs. Penn
After two games into the 2025 season, the Providence Friars hold a 1-1 record. The win being a 10-point victory over Holy Cross, the loss being a heartbreaking overtime thriller loss to the Virginia Tech Hokies this past weekend at Mohegan Sun Arena. Their next opponent? The Penn Quakers who are also 1-1 coming off a six-point loss to American.
The lone loss on Providence's schedule only adds that much more of a razor thin margin for error in non-conference play, they must come out of the non-conference part of the schedule with at least a 9-1 or 8-2 record.
Here's how they get back on track against Penn Tuesday night at the Amica Mutual Pavilion:
Play a Full 40 Minutes of Defense
This team is super exciting and fun to watch with the number of players who can create and score on their own in Jason Edwards, Jaylin Sellers, and Stefaan Vaaks there's no denying that, but at the end of the day this team will go as far as their defense takes them. This team is talented enough offensively to win enough games, but the true deciding factor of this season will be the amount of consistent defensive performances this group is able to put together with an emphasis in the second half of play. So far, the Friars have allowed 186 total points through two games with 119 of them being scored in the second half and beyond. Walking into the AMP are the Quakers who scored 119 points in their season opener against Rowan, shooting 39-71 (54.9%) from the field, 8-22 (36.4%) from behind the arc, and scored 66 points in the second half. Providence must limit the Quakers in these areas so they do not find themselves in another shootout like how they did against the Hokies.
Contain Ethan Roberts
One of my biggest takeaways from the Virginia Tech game was the impact that superstar freshman Neoklis Avdalas had on the game as he had a 33 point, six assists, and six rebound performance. The number two ranked international newcomer in college basketball this season by 247Sports had his career high in points in any game of basketball that he has played, even the 20 games in the Greek Basket League during his first season with Panathinaikos, plus the six EuroLeague games he played that same season. I'm not saying that Ethan Roberts is Avdalas as he's not and most likely won't encore the legacy game performance that Avdalas had, but he still is Penn's leading scorer with 28 and 19 points scored in Penn's first two games as he went 8-11 from the field and 4-5 from three in their opener. We all saw the impact that Avdalas was able to have on the game, let's make sure that Roberts does not have a similar impact so that this game does not become a trap game for the Friars.
Win the Little Things Battle
This one is not the most flashy or sexy per se, but it is still vastly important if Providence does not want to end up on the losing side of a trap game. The little things being free throws, turnovers, and fouls. In their last game the Friars were able to shoot 22-25 (88.0%) from the charity stripe, which is an encouraging sign, especially Oswin Erhunmwunse finishing 5-5 which is huge, but PC still allowed 20 points off of their 14 turnovers and had 19 fouls. These must not happen again so that these little things do not end up becoming big things for Providence against an inferior opponent in a game that should not be relatively close.
The game plan for Providence is simple, let's see if they can execute on all three and get back on track with a 2-1 record before traveling to Colorado for another crucial non-conference game test in Boulder on Friday night.