Perhaps Providence really is one of the luckiest programs in the country
It’s quite possible few of us would know of Ed Cooley had things turned out differently in 2000. Just about ten years after he first stepped foot on Stonehill’s campus as an undergrad in 1989, a young Cooley was an assistant at Boston College and a finalist for the head coaching position at his alma mater.
Cooley played over 100 games for the program, then had brief stints as an assistant coach at UMass-Dartmouth and Stonehill before joining Al Skinner’s coaching staffs at Rhode Island and BC.
The job ultimately went to Kevin O’Brien, a former head coach at Brandeis who spent the latter part of the 1990s as an assistant at Harvard and Boston University.
It was back to Boston College for Cooley — a program that was about to see a drastic change in its fortunes.
Skinner’s first three years at BC were underwhelming, finishing a game under .500 in year one, followed by records of 6-21 in 1998-99 and 11-19 in ’99-00.
It turns out, not getting the Stonehill gig was life-changing for Cooley.
The 2000-01 season saw one of the great turnarounds in Big East history, with Boston College finishing 27-5 — they had the best record in the league and won the conference tournament that March.
Over the next five seasons (Cooley’s final five at BC), the Eagles went 20-12, 19-12, 24-10, 25-5, and 28-8. They started the 2004-05 season 20-0 and were ranked as high as #3 in the nation by the AP voters.
Cooley took the head coaching job at Fairfield prior to the 2006-07 season, and hasn’t looked back since.
“I still think one of the best things that ever happened was not getting that job (at Stonehill),” Cooley said as he reflected back on it in 2014. “The best jobs sometimes are the ones you don’t get, and I didn’t get that job and it turned my life around.”
It’s possible Cooley would have found his way into a D1 coaching job after landing at Stonehill.
It’s also possible that Providence would have found another coach, or combination of coaches, between 2011 and today that would have led them to five 20-win seasons, five NCAA Tournament berths, a Big East title, and another appearance in the Big East Tournament championship game.
Neither scenario is very likely, however.
After picking up his 300th career victory against St. John’s on Saturday, Cooley seemed almost caught off guard by how much it meant to him: “I never saw this coming,” he said before pausing to collect himself. “I think it’s a credit to my family, because you take a lot away from your family, when you’re not home and all of us (coaches) go through that. It’s just a number, but the fact that you can get to that tells you that people believe in you, people trust you, you have a great staff, many, many coaches that have helped you get there. This is not a 300th win for me. This is a family win, this is a program win, a Providence win, the many people that support you. I never saw that coming.”
Just over a week ago — after Providence improved to 13-1 with a blowout of DePaul, Jeff Goodman called the Friars the “luckiest program in the country.” His premise was that PC likely wouldn’t have won at Wisconsin had they had Johnny Davis, at UConn with Adama Sanogo, or against Seton Hall had they not been missing key contributors.
The Friars were playing well and the faithful, frankly, didn’t want to hear it. Not after the program had seen its share of bad luck under Cooley — from losing Kris Dunn for two years, Rodney Bullock missing two years of his own, missing out on the opportunity to see an NBA-level talent in Ricky Ledo, drawing Dayton in Ohio, and losing critical pieces like Nate Watson and Vincent Council for prolonged stretches.
Maybe the Friars were due for some luck.
Then again, maybe we already had it.
Stonehill wasn’t the only school to pass over Cooley. A year before Providence hired Cooley he was a finalist for the head coaching job at Boston College, but the Eagles chose to go with Steve Donahue, who had just led Cornell to the Sweet 16 after knocking off Temple and Wisconsin.
Donahue lasted four years at BC, finishing 22 games below .500 in his tenure there.
At 14-2, Providence has already surpassed its win total from a season ago, when they finished 13-13. Last year marked the first time that PC won fewer than 18 games since Cooley picked up the scraps of the Friar program in 2011-12 and started to rebuild it.
It was a program in need of an overhaul in virtually every way. Expectations have been raised dramatically since then and we all want more, but every once in a while it’s okay to reflect on where this program was, some of the challenges they have faced, and the biggest moments that have taken place under Cooley.
Goodman meant to disparage the Friars when he called them the luckiest program in the country, but he was right. Providence has certainly been quite fortunate to have Cooley at the helm over the past 11 years.