PC coach Tim Welsh gets his point across in the first half yesterday at the Dunk.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — Bill Belichick is rubbing off on Tim Welsh these days.

After dropping two games last week to fall into a quick hole in the Big East, Welsh took a page out of the Patriot legend’s quote book and began preaching to his players the importance of blocking out distractions and looking only at the very next game.

With a good week of practice and two wins, the Friars are back to 2-2 in the conference, 11-5 overall and boast a group of players who seem to be getting the message.

The latest example was an impressive 86-70 throttling of South Florida yesterday before 8,721 fans at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. PC played harder defensively, received all sorts of offensive contributions and outplayed a good Bulls team.

“It was a good win,” said Welsh. “We had good energy out there. I think the guys are starting to understand how big every game is. It doesn’t matter what your record is. You can get back into the mix quickly or you can get out of the mix quickly. It’s a long season. One game at a time.”

That was a message the players needed to hear after last week’s losses at Marquette and DePaul. Entering this weekend’s games, only 3 of the 16 Big East teams had enjoyed the fruits of a road win. Those clearly won’t come easily all season. But scooping up wins at home is mandatory and PC accomplished what it needed to this week with easy wins over Rutgers and USF.

“We were pretty down after the DePaul game but we had a meeting [that night] and just agreed that we had to work a lot harder,” said forward Geoff McDermott. “Now if we practice even harder, we can beat anybody.”

The road only gets tougher in the Big East (up next: at UConn) but the Friars will hit the bricks with renewed confidence. McDermott led the way yesterday with a career-high 24 points, seven rebounds and three steals. Dwain Williams returned from an ankle injury and poured in five 3-pointers and 16 points. Jeff Xavier also finished with 16 and Randall Hanke added 10.

Kentrell Gransberry led the Bulls (10-7, 1-3) with 22 points and Chris Howard added 16.

Three good signs rang true in this one for Providence. First, the team’s zone defense was a factor for the second straight game and fifth consecutive half. The Bulls wanted to find Gransberry and PC shadowed him with two defenders inside the zone whenever possible. Hanke, McDermott, Ray Hall and Jonathan Kale all took turns defending in the post. Hall provided a major first-half spark that helped the Friars limit the Bulls to 40 percent shooting and give PC a 43-31 halftime lead.

The second positive came with the return of Williams. He nailed deep 3-pointers the first two times he touched the ball. His third trey of the half started a 13-3 Friar run that closed the opening half.

The final positive was the emergence of McDermott as a scorer. While always capable, the burly point-forward can concentrate on his playmaking skills as a passer too often and that frequently detracts from his scoring skills. With South Florida’s defenders clearly backing off him, McDermott fired up his jumper early and he hit three 3-pointers and totaled 15 of his 24 points by halftime.

“I was open a lot,” McDermott said. “I’ve gotten a lot more shots up on my own and Coach has been telling me I’m passing up my shot too much.”

McDermott is already the best passing forward in the Big East and a powerful rebounder. He was averaging 10.8 points entering yesterday’s game.

“Geoff has not shot the ball particularly well from the three this year. He shot it better last year before he got hurt,” said Welsh. “I told him he can get that part of his game back with more work. When he shoots the ball like that, it opens up a lot of things for him.”

With McDermott and Williams on target from long-range, PC made 13-of-21 tries from beyond the 3-point line. An Xavier trey and six quick points from Hanke got the Friars rolling early in the second half and their lead grew to 63-43 on a Williams three at the 12:18 mark. Gransberry kept the Bulls alive for a spell but the visitors didn’t crawl within 15 points the rest of the way.

kmcnamar@projo.com