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Team: Providence Friars

2025-26 Record: 15-18, 7-13 Big East

2025-26 Big East Finish: Tied for seventh with Marquette and Butler, ended up as the #9 seed by way of head to head record against those two teams; one game behind DePaul, one game ahead of a tie for last between Xavier and Georgetown.

Final 2025-26 Computer Rankings

NET: #78
KenPom.com: #67
BartTorvik.com: #70

Postseason: The Friars checked out for the year after beating Butler in the first round of the Big East tournament and then losing by 13 to St. John’s in the quarterfinals.

Only Returning Player: Yes, normally we start the player discussion with who is departing to set the table to discuss exactly what the team is losing from last year and/or what do the returning guys and newcomers have to replace. However, it’s going to save us a whole bunch of time and energy to just tell you that Ryan Mela is the only returning player on the entire roster. He was in and out of the starting lineup as a sophomore this past year, ultimately averaging 9.9 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game while shooting a not-quite-helpful 32% on three-pointers. You might remember him from that time he got hit with a technical foul with less than a minute to play while down 29 points because he shoved Marquette walk-on Casey O’Malley to the ground.

Notable Departures: The most notable one is head coach Kim English, who was sent on his way with a record of 48-52 in three seasons at Providence. It was pretty much all downhill for English after he threw a nonsensical fit about missing the NCAA tournament in Year 1 and then followed that up by by losing to Davidson and St. Bonaventure before Christmas on his way to 12-20 in Year 2.

After that, there’s a 14-way tie for the second most notable departure. As I mentioned, everyone not named Ryan Mela is gone. Six of those 14 guys were seniors this past season, so they were always gone, no matter who the head coach was going to be. In terms of “was it right to pull the plug on Kim English,” his top two scorers — Jaylin Sellers and Jason Edwards — were both on their final year of eligibility this past season, so English was going to have to revamp things anyway if he stuck around. If you don’t like the direction that it was trending under his direction AND whoever the coach is would have to reset the roster kind of notably anyway? Yeah, probably a solid idea to make the change.

Key Additions: Because we’ve got a coaching change, we have to detour real quick…..

Coach: Bryan Hodgson, going into his first season at Providence and fourth as a Division 1 head coach. He went 45-28 in two years at Arkansas State and is coming off a 25-9 season at South Florida that put the Bulls into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2012.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…….

Key Additions: Everyone on the roster other than Ryan Mela is new. That includes three freshmen and a redshirt freshman that has “did not see any action” in his team bio but isn’t on the 2025-26 roster. Sure.

One of the freshmen is from Italy, one of the freshmen is from Overtime Elite but isn’t rated or ranked by 247 Sports (which I think defies the logic of the use of the word “elite”), and one is Dink Pate. You tell me if this person is a college freshman under the definition of the new five years/five seasons/clock starts running when you graduate high school rules the NCAA put in this summer: High school class of 2023, one year with G League Ignite, one year with Mexico City in the G League, one year with Westchester in the G League. I would argue that sounds an awful lot like someone who is going into their fourth of five possible years of eligibility….. and someone who is actually not eligible at all because they were in the G League. Now, I will point out that he was born in March of 2006, so he has only just now turned 20…. but again: Three years in the G League drawing a paycheck, and he was entered in the 2025 NBA Draft, too. Let’s put it another way: Dink Pate played in a game on the same team as Tyler Kolek this past season.

Alrighty, that means there are eight transfers on the roster here. I don’t have time or interest in running through all of them, not when the entire roster is still wearing name tags at practice. One of them is following Bryan Hodgson north from Tampa, and that’s Gavin Hightower (6’1”, 165 lb sophomore guard, Los Angeles, California). It’s nice that he wants to keep playing for the same coach, but said coach had him averaging less than 10 minutes a night in the American for conference play last season. Okay, that’s unfair, his minutes picked way up towards the end of the year, which includes double digits in both of their American tournament games and in the 83-79 loss to Louisville in the NCAA tourney.

There are just two high major transfers on the list here. One is Arrinten Page (6’11”, 245 lb senior forward, Atlanta, Georgia), who has bounced from USC to Cincinnati to Northwestern and now to Providence. He averaged 10.2 points and 4.5 rebounds as a part-time starter for the Wildcats last season, which was his most productive year in college hoops. The other high major guy is Malik Mack (6’2”, 175 lb. senior guard, Oxon Hill, Maryland), whom you might remember from his two years at Georgetown. (ASIDE: I don’t want to come across as judgy, but when you go from Harvard to Georgetown to Providence, you’re going in the wrong direction.) Mack put up 13.3 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 4.2 assists a night in two seasons for the Hoyas, and he’s obviously familiar with the level of play in this conference as well.

Outlook: Any actual predicting regarding Providence men’s basketball for 2026-27 is guessing. It’s an entirely brand new roster coached by a guy in his fourth year as a head coach and who happens to be on his third team in three seasons. I don’t know how this is going to go, you don’t know how this is going to go, Bryan Hodgson hopes it goes well. That’s the most optimistic thing we can say about the Friars right now, even with BartTorvik.com going waaaaay out over their computerized skis and projecting PC at just outside the top 50.

With that said.

Bryan Hodgson is a Nate Oats guy. He was on staff with Oats back when he was at Buffalo, and then he followed his boss to Alabama. Their last year at Buffalo was the Bulls’ best ever season in the KenPom.com era. Hodgson’s last year on the bench at Alabama was the best KP season for that program. Hodgson took over an Arkansas State program that went 13-20 with a 4-14 record in the Sun Belt the year before and got them to 20-17 overall and 11-7 in the league in his first season. Year Two ended up as Arkansas State’s best year in the KenPom era. Hodgson’s only year at South Florida is the Bulls’ best KenPom season, too.

It would seem undeniable that Hodgson knows how to have a positive impact on a basketball roster. For the last 11 years, he’s been touring the country either helping or leading programs to their best seasons since 1997. It would be wrong on multiple levels to expect him to immediately pull off that kind of performance with Providence, as that would mean a KenPom top 25 finish because Tim Welsh had them at #24 at the end of the season in 2004. (Ed Cooley’s best finish was #27! In 2015!) That’s definitely a bridge too far to expect.

But can Hodgson coach a competitive team in this league right away? Sure. If his high tempo system carries over, then the focus on turnovers on both ends and getting after it on the offensive glass plus forcing bad shots can do a lot of damage right away. There might be some bumps in the road what with the lack of familiarity between the players, but I wouldn’t be surprised to be able to put a Most Improved From Start To End label on Providence by the time we get to next April.

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