PC coach Keno Davis reacts as his team trails Baylor in the second half of Thursday night’s game.

AP / Mark Avery

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Now here is a profound statement: Big men, preferably talented ones, are indispensable in the sport of basketball.

You cannot play without them. You can try to cover up your lack of size or talent in the lane with quick guards, outside shooters and maybe some run-and-press wrinkles. But when it comes time to match a jump hook, a blocked shot or a power move to the rack and you have no answers, you cannot win.

This, in a nutshell, is Keno Davis’ problem right now. For whatever reason, he has decided that his first Providence team will use an eight-player rotation that features only three big men: seniors Geoff McDermott, Jonathan Kale and Randall Hanke.

They’re not big or good enough. They weren’t for the last three seasons and they aren’t now. That stone-cold fact was on ugly display on Thursday night as the Friars were throttled by Baylor, 72-56, in the first round of the 76 Classic.

Forget for a moment that PC’s shooters were ice cold, going a paltry 4-for-23 from behind the 3-point line. That chuck-and-duck offense will be addressed here later. McDermott twisted his ankle in the game’s second minute and was a shell of himself (1-for-7, 2 rebounds) the rest of the way. That moved Kale to the front burner, and while the former St. Andrew’s School forward continually fought and worked hard to create room to catch the ball in the post, he just can’t finish on a consistent basis. He made 4 of 8 shots, but except for one ill-timed 3-point brick, all of his shots were point-blank layups.

Hanke apparently is not a Davis favorite right now. At 6-foot-11, the New Yorker owns the size to score in the post, and his career 67 percent shooting rate says he can get it done, but when he touches the ball he’s not receiving it where he can flick in his patented lefty moves. Instead, he sits because of his lack of defense and rebounding prowess. He saw only eight minutes in the grizzly loss to the Bears.

A fourth big forward, sophomore Alex Kellogg, didn’t see any time at all against Baylor, and the best part of his game right now does not include offense.

All three senior big men are very good, if not dominating, against inferior teams. A Dartmouth or Maine has few answers for McDermott’s bulk, Kale’s aggressiveness or Hanke’s size. Baylor did. And so will Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Notre Dame and so many other teams in the loaded Big East.

The Bears outrebounded the Friars, 47-33. Seven-footer Mamadou Diene was credited with only one block, but he was a factor. So was 6-foot-9 power forward Kevin Rogers, the exact type of player the Friars so badly need.

This brings us back to Davis’ shoot-and-a-prayer offense. The coach no doubt correctly sees his lack of an inside game and has decided that spreading the floor and letting his five guards drive the ball or shoot threes is the way to play. He may not have much of a choice, but all offenses must work inside-out. If you can’t keep a defense honest inside, it can extend out beyond the 3-point line, and the types of elite teams on PC’s schedule are blessed with superior athletes who can play lock-down defense.

That creates contested threes or threes that become 24-footers instead of 21-footers. PC fans are also going to learn that the Friars have a collection of good, but not great, shooters. So with no inside game and too many errant threes, you get a whitewash like the Baylor game.

Entering last night’s game against Charlotte, it was hard to look down the PC bench and see Bilal Dixon sitting in his sweats and Jamine Peterson in street clothes. Davis’ plans to red-shirt both of those athletic forwards looked understandable after a game or two, but it needs to be revisited. There is precedent on that front, of course. A few years back, Tim Welsh kept a young forward on his bench for the opening seven games. But when he put Ryan Gomes in against South Carolina and he put up 15 points, the red-shirt plans were toast.

There is no guarantee that either Dixon or Peterson can provide anything close to a Gomes-type lift, but the Friars must find some low-post scoring. After the Baylor loss, an exasperated Davis let slip a moment of truth when he said, “We are not a good enough team right now to win games in the Big East.”

That’s been the situation for several years in a row now. Unfortunately for this group of Friars, it doesn’t look like this season will be much different.

kmcnamar@projo.com