Sorting through the Ed Cooley speculation and how a Friday night game against Kentucky became an afterthought
I had it all planned out. We were going to Greensboro — not Sacramento, Des Moines, or Denver — to see Providence take on Kentucky in a primetime Friday night event.
I had committed to first covering what happened on the floor on Friday night, and then digging into all of the other speculation that was so suddenly surrounding this program and its coach.
After spending eight weeks in the Associated Press top 25, and winning thrillers against Marquette, Connecticut, and Creighton after a challenging November, this Friar team deserved that much.
Due to a last-minute change I never made it down to Greensboro. And the in-depth breakdown of what happened in PC’s 61-53 loss isn’t coming in the immediate aftermath of this one. It isn’t coming because Friday night, and the build-up to the game, became about something more.
For 40 minutes it was about the game. In those 40 minutes we watched to see how Bryce Hopkins fared against his old team. We saw Oscar Tschiebwe grab 25 rebounds and Antonio Reeves hit daggers whenever UK needed a big shot. We saw Ed Croswell battling the most physical big man in the country — scoring to bring Providence to within 42-37 at the 15-minute mark of the second half after trailing by double figures in the first. We saw an opportunity slip away after Tschiebwe was sent to the bench with a pair of fouls shortly after Croswell’s aforementioned bucket.
Providence managed to score just one point in the next five minutes with Tschiebwe out of the game. By the time he returned, Kentucky extended its lead to 46-38 and the Friars would get no closer than four.
PC lost a game in which it trailed by seven at the half, but held Kentucky to just 23 points after the break. They could only muster 22 points of their own in the second half, making five of 24 from three on the night.
Win or loss, I wanted to break it all down. What could have gone right, what went wrong.
But this week was never about the game, and outside of that 40-minute window on Friday night, it was never about this particular Friar team, unfortunately.
For all of the energy, the outrageously wild energy, that surrounded this program over the past two years, seemingly no one could muster up much of anything in the days prior to a meeting with Kentucky.
The Ed Cooley-to-Georgetown rumors went from speculation to reports from the likes of Pete Thamel, Jeff Goodman, and Kevin McNamara. And with every opportunity Cooley was presented with to quell any concerns about his status, he responded with what essentially amounted to a no comment.
When first asked about it following Friday’s loss, Cooley responded, “Next question.” When the follow-up came immediately after it was, “I know you guys are all trying to do your job. I get it. But after a game like this, I just think it’s fair to talk about our players. I think it’s fair to talk about the game.”
He continued, “I think those are very hard questions when you are just going off speculation. Doing your job, but it’s about the game, and it has nothing to do with my future or my present.”
His comments to the local media were less encouraging: “It’s a lot of decisions I need to make. It’s a lot of thinking I’m going to do. I want to make sure I’m there for our players, and I know you guys have been doing this, and are doing your job, and I appreciate that — a lot of reflecting I need to do, and I’ll definitely let you know what we’re going to do when this is all over.”
I was never one of those who believed Cooley would never walk away from PC.
Maybe he never will.
But who could have envisioned the position Providence currently finds itself in?
It really had taken 12 years to get Providence to the enviable place it stood in under Ed Cooley in February. Reigning Big East champs and a Sweet 16 team a year ago to a top 25 fixture this season, with a coaching staff who were becoming kings of the transfer portal with very promising recruiting classes in 2023 and ’24 in hand.
Over the past two years the building that turned from the Dunk to the AMP had been utterly wild on a nightly basis — crazy against the likes of Northeastern, and unhinged versus Marquette and UConn.
This thing looked built for sustained success in a way it hadn’t in seemingly forever.
And now we’re left waiting to see what’s next — and it happened so quickly.
Providence is faced with not only potentially losing the man who has become so much more than a coach to this community, to having to compete against him twice a year in the same conference.
As much as it is a reality, it’s still impossible to imagine Cooley and his Hoyas coming back to Providence, or Cooley wearing Georgetown blue in the press room of the AMP.
Yet, even in a best-case scenario, if Cooley does return there will always remain questions over how this speculation impacted a team that dropped five of its final six games after going 15-4 from the beginning of December to mid-February.
Ed Cooley brought this program back to life. He set this place on fire, like he promised he would in his introductory press conference. He more than elevated the program, and the college, over the past decade plus, and was at the helm when we all finally got out of the house after nearly two years as the Dunk exploded into nightly delirium following the pandemic.
Maybe that’s enough for him. Maybe he feels like he’s maxed out what he can do here, or perhaps he wants a new challenge. Maybe it’s all just business.
Soon enough, we’ll see if Providence will continue forging ahead behind Cooley, or start a rebuilding process that no one saw coming a few weeks ago.
This is the kind of reporting I miss. Great job, Kevin.
Great article. Appreciate all the work you put in. Don’t know what I’d do without this site