Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

PC completed their 3 game trip to Italy today with a perfect record. Ok, so the competition was not good at all. It was highly anticipated that they would win all their games. The impressive thing about the trip is that the Friars were without the following players:

Kris Dunn, Starting PG - Not ready to play after surgery last year (Cautionary)
Jalen Lindsey, Freshman SF Top 100 - Illness
Ben Bentil, Freshman PF - Either clearinghouse or Visa issues (He is from Africa)
Pascal Chukwu, Freshman C - Either clearinghouse or Visa issues (He is from Africa)

The Friars won their first game 135-50 against Nelson Basket. The notable stats from this game:
Junior Lomomba - 32 pts 5 rebs 3 ast
Rodney Bullock - 29 pts 9 rebs 4 ast and 4 stl

In the second game the Friars beat TIBER BASKET 79-46. I have not found a full game boxscore, so I am not sure exactly how the individual players did, but here is an article on the game:
http://www.coxhub.com/articles/friars-b ... 46-in-rome

The final game was another blowout 129-42 against Basket Academy Perugia. The game was today so the only number that has really been revealed was that Rodney Bullock apparently dropped 40 pts and 20 rebs.

While this may not be the most intense competition, it was a good time for most of the Friars to bond and play together in an actual game. These types of trips usually pay off down the road, so it will be interesting to see how the team does when all of its players are on the court.

Congrats Friars! I'm looking forward to seeing all the Big East teams coming up here soon. Lot of young talent on pretty much every team in the league.

Any concerns with Chukwu or Bentil being eligible for this season?

Not especially worried. But in today's NCAA, you never know.

The PC radio guys are going to love saying Junior Lomomba.

The only stat line I saw from the second game was that Harris had 27pts and 11 reb.
Looking at the 3 games; it looks like Henton and Harris will be the returning scorers.
Austin was the prize of the 2013 class for PC, but the staff is really high on Bullock and he could be a real sleeper after not playing last year.
Lomomba also looks real good in Italy. And the 3 top 100 freshmen will help..hearing good things about Bentil who was the lowest ranked of the 3.
Completely different team from last year with more depth, length, and balanced scoring.

The lineup will look something like this:
Dunn 6'4"...Cartwright 5'11"
Harris 6'9"...Lomomba 6'5"
Henton 6'6"...Lindsay 6'7"
Bullock 6'8"....Bentil 6'8"
Desrosiers 7'0"...Chukwu 7'2"

Have not had a PC team with this kind of size in quite some time. Blocks, steals, deflections, fast break, alley-oops. Will be fun to watch.

Any St John's fans comment on their trip last year? I feel like I watched something or read some articles and they played more games and I'm guessing against higher comp as they won a few and lost a few.

It was hard to get info on the Friar opponents but it looks like level "D" or "E" of their pro leagues...?

dmac80 wrote:Any St John's fans comment on their trip last year? I feel like I watched something or read some articles and they played more games and I'm guessing against higher comp as they won a few and lost a few.

It was hard to get info on the Friar opponents but it looks like level "D" or "E" of their pro leagues...?

St John's played 5 games with varying difficulty. Im surprised you guys only played three. SJU went 3-2, one team was compared to a division 3 opponent, one was a high level euro team, and the other 3 fell in between.

Final stats from all 3 games in Italy:

http://pcbb1917.com/2014/08/25/final-stats-from-providences-3-games-in-italy/

The Euro competition is absolutely horrid. PC and SJU made some Euro teams look like high school squads overseas. It means nothing. We will see where we are when Duke comes to the Garden.