The peaks and valleys of the Providence Friars serve as a microcosm of a volatile college basketball season that has already seen six No. 1 teams in the AP Poll. Providence was unranked in the preseason but climbed as high as No. 8 in the polls after beating current No. 1 Villanova on the road, only to drop four of its last six games. The Friars have been all over the map this year.
Kris Dunn and Ben Bentil do absolutely everything for Providence
Providence’s two stars need some help if the Friars are going to make a run in the NCAA Tournament.
Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports
The main issue? Providence lives and dies by its two best players, Kris Dunn and Ben Bentil, who carry the team’s offense almost entirely on their own.
To break down how much weight the two have carried, I calculated how many points Dunn and Bentil were responsible for (PRF), and added them together against the team’s total. PRF includes points scored by each player and points scored off assists from each player.
The final column adds points and assists by both Dunn and Bentil – minus assists to each other – and stacks that total against the team’s total for each game this season.
The two have combined to score or assist on 64.2 percent of all Friars points this season.
These totals are even a little lower than reality as points off free throw assists and points scored off misses from Dunn and Bentil aren’t included.
In total, Dunn has scored or assisted on 793 of the Friars’ 1,926 points, good for 41.2 percent of the team’s total despite missing two full games and sitting out for half of another. Take away the two games he missed entirely and he’s contributed to nearly half of his team’s points at 44.5 percent.
Compare him to another top point guard in the nation, Maryland’s Melo Trimble, who performs the lion’s share of work for the Terrapins offense, and Dunn contributes almost 10 percent more points than Trimble’s 35.9 percent.
Bentil, who might be the most improved player in the country this year, complements Dunn as the team’s only other dependable scorer. He’s leading the Big East with 20.4 points per game, and has contributed to 30.1 percent of points including points off assists on his own.
Together they’ve been everything, but even then not enough.
Losses are highlighted in red on the chart, and the most alarming fact is that Providence hasn’t been able to beat many ranked opponents despite decent or better than decent output from its stars.
Nobody’s stepped up as the duo has scored or assisted on 58.6 percent of points or more in each of the team’s losses, and that not-so-low number came as Bentil only played 14 minutes with an ankle injury.
It’s astounding and almost unfair that the pair has been responsible for 75 percent of their team’s points or more on seven occasions this season, and when both have played they’ve contributed to less than half of the team’s total just once.
The Friars have a month to figure out how they’re going to distribute offensive chores, but good news is that history says there’s time. The Connecticut Huskies dropped seven of their last 11 regular season games in 2011 before cruising their way to a national title.
Providence gets another shot at Xavier on Wednesday.
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