For the bulk of his first three years at Providence, Ed Cooley was the bad luck kid. He gave promise to Friar fans tired of losing by pulling in recruits of unprecedented stature, only to see something go wrong with nearly every one of those players.
There’s hope for Providence basketball without Kris Dunn and Ben Bentil
Few teams lost more this offseason than the Providence Friars. How will Ed Cooley keep the ball rolling without stars Kris Dunn and Ben Bentil?
Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports
Kris Dunn tore his labrum, Ian Baker tore his ACL, Ricky Ledo was deemed academically ineligible and went to the draft; all this resulted in a failure to win 20 games in either of Cooley's first two seasons on the job, and a failure to snap Providence's now decade-long streak of missing the NCAA Tournament.
With things at a tipping point heading into 2013-14, the scales finally shifted back in Cooley's direction. Bryce Cotton morphed into a bon-a-fide college star, while LaDontae Henton and Kadeem Batts each upped their production significantly in supporting roles. The Friars won the first "new" Big East Tournament and crashed the Big Dance for the first time since 2004.
With Cotton graduating and moving on to the league, a healthy Dunn was ready to take the superstar reigns in 2014-15. He and Henton combined to average more than 35 points and 12 rebounds per game as the Friars won 22 games and once again heard their names called on Selection Sunday.
Dunn shocked the college hoops world in the spring of 2015 by declaring that he would not be entering the NBA Draft -- where most had him pegged as a lottery pick -- in favor of returning to Providence for his junior season. The most puzzling thing about Dunn's decision was that he would be returning to a Friar team that was -- aside from Dunn -- bringing back little, and seemed like something of a long shot to make the NCAA Tournament.
For the third straight season, Cooley needed a player to up his production dramatically in order to remain a contender in the Big East, and the for the third straight season it happened. Seemingly out of nowhere, sophomore Ben Bentil went from a player who scored 20 points just once as a freshman to one who averaged 21.1 ppg in 2015-16. His coming of age combined with Dunn's established stardom allowed PC to be one of the most pleasant surprises in college basketball last season, and also carried the Friars to their first NCAA Tournament win since 1997.
Bentil’s meteoric rise to national notoriety also brought with it a previously unforeseeable problem. Exactly one week before the deadline for underclassmen to make a decision about their future arrived, Bentil announced that he was hiring an agent and staying in the draft. That news, coupled with the expected early departure of Dunn, meant that Cooley would be losing 37.5 ppg, 13.0 rpg, 7.3 apg and 3.4 spg ... just from those two players.
“It’s a positive thing in the long-term,” Cooley told the Providence Journal in May. “It’s not every time that we have the opportunity to coach two pros. That’s a great problem to have and certainly something we can use in recruiting.”
Okay, but what about the short-term?
Providence has won 69 games over the last three seasons and been to the NCAA Tournament in three straight years for the first time since 1972-74. In order for that trend to continue, Cooley needs the trend of one or two guys seamlessly transitioning from role player to Big East star to continue as well.
The obvious candidate to become the most popular player at the Dunkin' Donuts Arena this season is rising junior Rodney Bullock, who averaged a respectable 11.4 ppg and 6.8 rpg in 2015-16. Bullock was suspended for the entire 2013-14 season while he and teammate Brandon Austin were being investigated for sexual assault (the State of Rhode Island ultimately did not bring charges against either player), and then missed all of the next season because of a knee injury. He showed flashes of brilliance once his college career finally began, but those instances tended to be balanced out by equally frequent moments of frustrating inconsistency.
Junior guard Jalen Lindsey is another candidate. His per-game averages are similar to the ones posted by Bentil two seasons ago, but a woeful 26.9 three-point shooting percentage -- one which didn't keep from him attempting 4.4 treys per game -- will need to be improved dramatically for him to dutifully shoulder a significant portion of the scoring load.
Cooley could also opt to play for the future and ride with a talented group of young players that includes four-star freshman Alpha Diallo and 2015 four-star recruit Ryan Fazekas, who saw his minutes dwindle as his freshman season went on.
The answers aren't apparent to anyone right now, but the comforting thing for Friar fans is that their head coach has been here before. Cooley lived and died with Dunn and Bentil last season, but he also lived and died with Henton and Dunn the year before, and Cotton and Henton the year before that. That philosophy resulted in more living than the Providence basketball program has experienced in over two decades.
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