Kevin McNamara: Improved seedings key for URI, PC

Kevin McNamara Journal Sports Writer kevinmcnamara33

The NCAA Tournament train never stops this time of the year.

As the drama and passion wraps up in one city, the winners move on to bigger games while the losers go back to sociology class. The joy and exuberance of the Sweet 16 stands in stark contrast to the painful finality of defeat, especially for seniors who’ve just experienced their personal basketball pinnacle.

While the NCAA train will pull into TD Garden on Friday night, the ball has stopped bouncing for the only two New England entries in the tournament. Providence College says goodbye to four seniors who will be remembered for their wild inconsistency, four straight NCAA seasons but only one victory. The Rhode Island Rams bid adieu to five program-changing seniors who led the program back onto the national scene, won games in two straight tourneys, but ultimately lacked the ammunition to penetrate the elite of the sport.

Here are a few takeaways from the just-completed season:

-- First the Friars. PC’s season began with a shot to the solar plexus when forward Emmitt Holt fell ill and needed season-ending abdominal surgery. That injury way back in October handicapped a team that, truthfully, was no longer a top-five outfit in the Big East.

To their credit, the Friars came together and won a host of big games. PC (21-14) rang up 13 wins against the RPI top 100 and an impressive five against teams that ultimately earned seeds of eight or better in the NCAA Tournament. That’s a credit to a coaching staff that navigated through the second-best conference in the country (via NCAA RPI numbers) and squeezed an awful lot out of an incredibly flawed team.

At the core of the group were three seniors who all somehow took a statistical step backwards. That’s not how things are supposed to work. An unfortunate ankle injury marred Kyron Cartwright’s production early on and then an equally unfortunate outbreak of the flu bug slowed other key players. Rodney Bullock was wildly inconsistent and while Jalen Lindsey became an elite defensive player, he also was strictly a stand-still 3-point shooter who amazingly attempted a mere 39 non-3s all season.

Without Holt, the bulk of the interior work was done by youngsters Kalif Young and Nate Watson. Neither was ready for the 25-plus minutes a game that every good team requires from a post player.

The Friars earned a nine seed from the NCAA but were shifted to a 10 due to bracketing principles created by Villanova and Xavier occupying No. 1 seeds. That peeved some of the fandom but this tournament does no favors for the teams that play out of the 7-10 holes. Those teams face a tossup first-round game that’s almost always decided by matchups. The winner runs into a powerhouse one or two seed and plays against long odds.

In these five straight NCAA seasons, the Friars’ matchups exposed their chief flaw. The only time they were legitimately favored (2015) as the six seed they ran into a gritty Dayton team that was spurred on by a partisan crowd in nearby Columbus. The last two trips, PC couldn’t deal with the NBA size of Southern Cal and Texas A&M.

Cooley is now 1-5 in NCAA tourney games. What does he need to do to flip those numbers? Win more regular-season games, for one. That leads to a better seed. Longer, more athletic players are on the way and it would be nice to get a bit luckier with health so Cooley can go to battle with the team he’s recruited.

-- Now for the Rams. The popular sentiment is that this was a "special season" in Kingston and it certainly was. Anytime you win your conference (for the first time), it’s very meaningful. But Dan Hurley is a coach who dreams of riding that NCAA train a while longer, so here are some numbers to ponder.

While playing only one truly bad game all season, the Rams (26-8) took advantage of a historically weak Atlantic 10. The A-10 was the 11th best RPI conference, trailing the Mid-American and the Missouri Valley. Rhody raced to the 19th best RPI but won just six games against top-100 teams and only one (Seton Hall) against a team seeded nine or better in the NCAAs.

In a normal A-10 season, all those wins would merit a stronger seed. But the ugly home loss to Saint Joseph’s and A-10 final defeat to Davidson cost the Rams a six seed, if not a five. That made all the difference in the world in the NCAAs. After getting a great draw in the first round against an Oklahoma team that won just two of its final 10 games and barely merited a bid, the Rams ran up against an NBA team on training wheels in Duke.

Hurley is correct in saying he’d love a shot at some other, less-talented one or two seed (Cincinnati, Purdue or Xavier anyone?), but the bottom line is that even after a wildly successful regular season, a top-25 ranking and the long-awaited packed houses at the Ryan Center, Rhody was slotted in one of those deadly 7-10 seeds.

The Rams deserve plenty of credit for beating Creighton and Oklahoma the last two years. Lord knows the one-and-done Friars would have welcomed more first-round success but only parochial losers compare the programs on that measurement alone.

This is about getting on that NCAA train and riding it for a while. As long as these talented coaches stay in place both programs are in strong positions to keep knocking on that door. Cooley has shown he can get to the Dance and the next wave of Friars looks bigger and more athletic than previous groups. With the long-awaited Ruane Center opening this fall at PC, recruiting should keep improving.

Hurley will surely field calls with lucrative job offers. Rhody has reworked his contract four times in six years and the lawyers had better get ready again. It’s hard to see where a significant pay increase over his $1.2-million package is going to come from and a dedicated men’s basketball practice facility is a pipe dream. But Hurley has shown the school what a winning program can do for the campus, if not the state.

Now we’ll see if this marriage can last. A little more money, plus some program enhancements, will keep Hurley in town as long as a top-20 power doesn’t enter the picture. That’s probably not Connecticut, and certainly isn’t Pittsburgh. If a Louisville calls, however, all bets are off.

-- kmcnamar@providencejournal.com

On Twitter: @KevinMcNamara33

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