PROVIDENCE — He’s the great enigma, the kid who once had 23 points and 15 rebounds on the road against Marquette as a sophomore, his future seemingly soaring as high as a deep 3-pointer.

He was 6-foot-11, he could run, and if you gave him the ball in the low post he could score. Thirty-four points against Vermont that year, 18 against Memphis in just 18 minutes, 17 points and 7 rebounds against Georgetown, 16 points against UConn.

You looked at him then, back when he used to start over Herbert Hill, and all you saw was the promise.

Then he missed the following year with a hand injury and personal issues.

After that?

He became a basketball tease, someone who had some big games last year, but they seemed few and far between, as if the great promise of his sophomore year had happened to someone else. A skill player in a very physical game. Someone who shot an amazing 72 percent from the field as a freshman, a school record, yet someone who could get banged around underneath, too.

Randall Hanke, the great enigma.

But yesterday, in the Friars’ win over St. John’s in the first Big East game of the season, we saw a little bit of the past, the way Hanke used to play, before that missed year seemed to change everything. He had 17 points, blocked three shots, and was more of a presence than he’s been in a long while. He even made a shot from the top of the key, one more reminder that Hanke always has been a big kid with skills.

Not that he was the only story, certainly. Not in a game where Sharaud Curry had 16 points, and got into the lane better than he’s done to this point this season, showing more of the quickness he had two years ago, before his foot injury caused him to miss last season.

It is not easy to miss a season. Sports are like a river, always moving forward, and to miss a year changes everything, for when you come back the river is not in the same place. It’s taken Curry nearly two months to begin to feel like he once did, and to start to play like it.

Hanke never got it back last year. Not really.

“It was frustrating,” he said. “You just try and stay patient. I knew my time would come.”

He was standing in the hallway outsider the PC locker room after the game. The Friars had survived being down 11-0 at the start of the game. They had protected their home court, vital in a Big East Conference where to go on the road is to walk through a minefield. They had won their first Big East game, disposing of another St. John’s team that can’t make a jump shot and can’t handle the ball. Another St. John’s team that’s doing its part to ruin college basketball in New York City.

“I tried to not let it bother me,” Hanke said, referring to last year, a season in which his minutes were down. “I’m a pretty positive person, and I tried to focus on getting better.”

That’s the thing that’s easy to overlook.

We focus on the team, and for good reason. The team is the main story. But every player has a story, too. And for Hanke, his challenge last year was to try and stay positive and focused as the season began slipping by him, a disappointing one for the Friars, and for him, too. It’s never easy when you don’t play as much as you want to, regardless of the level.

And how did he remain positive while spending so much time on the bench?

“I think I learned it from being a golfer,” he said. “Golf teaches you to take one shot at a time. You can’t let anything else get in the way.”

That was the mantra, anyway, the one that kept running through his head, and then for the first part of this season. Keep working to get better. Stay in the present tense. Wait for your time to come. All those time-honored slogans that hang on innumerable locker-room walls.

But there’s no doubt he was frustrated, too.

You don’t have 23 points and 15 rebounds on the road against Marquette as a sophomore, back when everything seemed all ahead of you, and not be frustrated when you don’t start and often seem like an afterthought. So that became Hanke’s internal struggle last year: How do you stay motivated and keep working to get better? How do you make yourself ready for when your time comes?

So much of sports is mental, the part fans never see.

But Hanke feels that the year off helped him, made him appreciate things more. Being on a team. How fortunate he was to be able to play college basketball in the first place. All the things that are so easy to take for granted when one season moves easily into the next, and you think you’re always going to be playing.

Hanke spent much of that first semester back home in New York City. Then he came back to school for the second semester. But when you aren’t eligible you become almost a non-person. It’s that river thing again: You’re either in the season or you’re not.

“Being out a year makes me cherish it more,” he said.

So even though last year was frustrating, even though there were nights when he seemed to be in search of the rhythm he once had had, he’s never doubted either himself. Nor has he ever doubted the sense that there will be better nights in the future, that it’s only a matter of time before he finds that promise he had as a sophomore, back when you looked at Hanke and saw the potential.

“My time will come,” he said.

Some of it came yesterday.

A reminder of the Randall Hanke we used to know.

breynold@projo.com