Dad and his brothers used to have season tickets for the Providence College Friar basketball games. As the season ticket prices increased, including a charge "for the privilege of being a season ticket holder", they stopped. Now with two of his brothers passing on, I try to take Dad to a couple of games. We didn't get to go last year due to Dad's health problems but he can get around well enough now. We saw the Friars play West Virginia Wednesday evening.
Technically the first half was a basketball game but I am not sure what PC was doing. There was a passive attempt at defense and no cohesion on offence at all as they found themselves down by 20 at the half.
The second half was slightly different as their full court pressure defense actually was active and caught West Virginia by surprise. They ended up quickly cutting the margin to 10 scoring on defensive turnovers. Their offense continued to be non-functional from a team-perspective. They would come down, make one pass and the player would go one-on-one. If they got in trouble, they would look to make a desperation pass, otherwise, the other four stood around waiting to see what would happen. Occasionally, the player would get fouled. More often than not, he'd miss, WV would get the rebound and with four or five passes get an easy score. The deficit got to just six points twice during the second half but each time WV got its act together and pulled away.
The Friars were at a size disadvantage but didn't play like a team at all to compensate. We are due to return for another game later this season. I wonder what we'll see then.
There is too much hoopla around the Friars glory days. I realize that college basketball is now an event and not just a game. This team did not play anything like its predecessors and the hoopla was embarrassing.
Note: this was
also posted to Steve's 2 Cents
