Quick note on Diallo before posting a season recap that I started last week and am just getting around to finishing. Blinky & HRB are right on: Diallo has declared for the draft because the new rules allow him to do so and potentially get feedback from NBA teams while retaining his eligibility. It's a great thing for the players. Diallo has had a very good first three years at PC, but I don't see him as a threat to leave, and I actually think he needs to take a quantum leap forward as a shooter to be on the draft radar even next spring. So, that being said...
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I guess it's long overdue to write the requiem for 2018-19 season. It can be summed up in a single word: Disappointing. A team picked to finish 3rd in the conference pre-season, coached by a guy who nearly always exceeds expectations, fell to 8th and was uncompetitive in several games for the first time in a long time.
The issue was not a riddle: The team's offense was horrendous, finishing 290th in the nation in eFG% (full-season) and last in the Big East (conference play) by a mile. Collectively, they couldn't make shots, despite an enviable amount of length and athleticism.
Player development within the young roster can be categorized into three buckets: Nominal growth (Watson, Diallo, Young); flashes of brilliance overshadowed by inconsistency -- particularly the Freshman (Reeves, Duke, Nichols & Edwards); or simple regression (Jackson, White & Ashton-Langford). Emmitt Holt was ultimately not healthy enough to contribute, and we didn't see enough from Kris Monroe to evaluate.
Ashton-Langford is transferring, as HRB predicted (I was wrong). It's hard to imagine a top 50 national recruit -- who was otherwise, by all accounts, a model citizen off the court -- producing less in his first two years at a school like Providence. That's not on Cooley; the consensus evaluation was way off, and he will likely finish his collegiate career at a mid-major. Edwards is also transferring for his final season, which is a bit sad. He played a key role in the only NCAA tournament win in the program's recent memory, and I'm not sure why Cooley couldn't find more consistent minutes for him. Decent shooter on a team of bad shooters.
The Friars did secure the commitment of grad transfer Luwane Pipkins from UMass, who should stabilize the PG position and help the team's offense, though I am curious to see how one of the nation's highest utilization shooters will integrate as a third scoring option (presumably after Reeves, Diallo). Cooley has also been linked to conventional transfers who would sit next season to play in '20-21. That makes plenty of sense when you consider the current roster imbalance of scholarship players: Four rising Seniors (Diallo, White, Young & Pipkins), not counting Holt; just one rising Junior from the heralded 2017 class (Watson); Four rising Sophomores (Reeves, Duke, Nichols & Monroe); and one incoming Freshman in athletic wing Greg Gantt. So there are at least two scholarships to fill, assuming they leave Holt's open pending his appeal for a sixth season of eligibility (which history says is unlikely even with the optimism Cooley has expressed publicly). If you assume a recruit of Gantt's pedigree/skill needs to play in Year 1, it makes sense for one if not both of those incoming scholarship players to redshirt.
April, and now increasingly May, is a time of roster transition, as we just saw with the surprise transfer of the Hauser brothers from Marquette, knocking the presumptive '19-20 Big East favorites down a couple of pegs. There will yet be other additions and departures impacting the conference and PC's fortunes in it, whether directly or indirectly. The thing that slightly concerns me, however, is a roster projected third in the conference last fall is likely to be picked somewhere between fifth and seventh heading into next season, without graduating a single starter. Think about it: The Friars are clearly behind Nova, Creighton and Seton Hall who are in most early top-25s; likely still behind Marquette and Georgetown; though clearly ahead of DePaul, St. John's, and I would argue, Butler. Again, a lot can and will change, but for all of the optimism we rightly felt 8 months ago, this is not a team expected to compete for a Big East title next season.