PC Falls to Brown 69-68

1972, the last time a Providence College team took on Brown University at a venue other than the Dunkin Donuts Center. Flash forward 40 years and second year head coach, Ed Cooley, found himself traveling across Providence to take on a 3-6 Brown squad.

Perhaps even greater news outside of PC playing at Brown for the first time in years, was the return of star point guard, Vincent Council. What fans didn’t expect, was to see Bryce Cotton sidelined with, what Ed Cooley called, “A swollen knee”, in his post game press conference. Without their leading scorer (Cotton, 22 PPG), PC struggled mightily on both ends of the floor, aside from LaDontae Henton’s career high 37 points. 

At the end of the first half, PC took a 34-31 lead into the locker room and it seemed as though, it would only be a matter of time until Cooley’s team would pull away from the lowly Ivy League school. The contrary occurred.

After getting 24 straight points out of Henton and a made layup by Kadeem Batts, the Friars had themselves a 67-60 lead with 1:58 left in the game. Following a missed three pointer by Henton, Sean McGonagill, for Brown, nailed a three of his own, to cut the PC lead to just 4 with 44.9 second left to play. Prior to inbounding the ball after the made three, Ed Cooley took a timeout. Unable to get the ball in, the Friars were forced to take a second timeout. With Council holding the ball, he was left helpless finding a receiver and tossed a pass in the direction of Kris Dunn, only to have it stolen away by Matt Sullivan.

This extremely frustrating play, incapable of inbounding the basketball after two timeouts, was the story of the game. With Brown gaining possession after PC’s seventh turnover of the game, Tucker Halpern (28 points, 10-17 FG, 8-15 3FG) nailed a three to trim the deficit to 1 with 32 seconds left. In the subsequent possession Brown sent Vincent Council to the line where he converted on just 1 of 2, to up the lead to 68-66.

With 7.3 seconds on the clock, McGonagill passed the ball to Halpern in the corner where he sunk the eventual game winning shot, giving the Bears a 69-68 lead. The contest came to an end with a missed three point attempt by Council on the opposite end giving Brown University their first victory over Providence since 2006.

Halpern was phenomenal tonight with his 8 made threes. Brown head coach Mike Martin was extremely pleased with his 6’8 senior forward saying, “The poise Tucker had once he caught the ball, to let the guy fly by and then knock the shot down”, speaking to the game winning three.

This loss certainly overshadowed LaDontae Henton’s career night (37 points 13-20 FG 6-10 3FG) and Ed Cooley had nothing positive to add after the game. “LaDontae couldn’t guard an ant tonight.” Besides Henton’s 37 the second leading scorer for the Friars was Batts with 10 points.

PC struggled all night against Brown’s three point attack. The Bears knocked down 13 trifectas on the night, including 2 huge ones by Halpern in the final 31 seconds of the game. Cooley went on to say, “We were terrible defensively, we are the worst defensive team I’ve coached. It’s just been our story, just continue to have a player, lose a player, have a player, lose a player.. I have a very fragile group, a very soft group, we better grow up real quick.”

PC, now 8-4 on the season, has a little less than a week off before they take on Rick Pitino and #4 Louisville.

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