Return of the “Traitor” Coach Cooley as Georgetown Faces Struggling PC Friars

Return of the “Traitor” Coach Cooley as Georgetown Faces Struggling PC Friars

Ah, yes, it was quite the game last January when former Coach Ed Cooley returned to Providence as the new Georgetown coach.  Cooley’s Georgetown team faced the Friars for the first time since he snuck out of town in the spring of 2023 to try and restore the downtrodden Hoyas program to its past glory and to fatten his wallet.

 

The PC victory was just a subplot last January 27th when the Friars escaped with an 84-76 win.  Was a win against Cooley enough?  Nope.  The PC student fans didn’t just want a win. They needed to vilify Cooley.  And lusty booing wasn’t enough.  It was mob mentality featuring several thousand 20-year-olds.  “F—k Ed Cooley” chants, along with other vulgarities fueled by overpriced beer, rang down from the AMP rafters.

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Unlike the “F—k the Mormons” chant incident in this season’s PC-BYU game, PC’s Athletic Director, Stephen Napollilo, did not go over to the student section in last years’ Georgetown game and stop the students from chanting. Napollilo even penned an apology on social media to BYU about the student behavior.  “That does not represent who Providence College is and what we stand for. We are sorry.”  Apparently, the student vulgarities railed at Cooley last year were OK with the PC Athletic Department.

 

So, besides the drama on the court this Saturday when a struggling Friars team takes on a revitalized Hoya’s squad, we probably can expect a barrage of more student vulgarities to be hurled at Cooley.  Will the Providence College administration make any attempt to take the high road and stop it?  Unlikely, and as much as I dislike Cooley’s sneaky departure from Friar Land in 2023,  I would like to be proven wrong on this.

 

This Year’s Game:  PC vs Georgetown

 

It was just 2 ½ weeks ago that it looked like Cooley and the Hoyas were exercising sweet revenge on the Friars.  On January 3rd, the Hoyas record read like this:  12-2 overall and 3-0 in the Big East.  But the Hoyas, while much improved from last year’s team that went 2-18 in the Big East, have come down to earth.  Prior to beating Villanova this week 64-63, the Hoyas lost 4 Big East games in a row.  They now stand at 13-6 overall and are 4-4 in the Big East.

 

 

As you can see from their games against Big East opponents, the Hoyas, even in their losses, keep the games close.  The one outlier is the whomping the Hoyas gave Creighton in the first Big East game for both teams.  That was a head-scratcher when I first saw the score.  Creighton must have assumed they were going to face another edition of a weak Georgetown squad and came to DC totally unprepared.  Alternatively, the Bluejays, when they saw an announced crowd of 4,000 rattling around in the 20,000 seat Capital Center, must have assumed they were playing an Ivy League opponent and put their subs on the floor for the first half.

 

Let’s look at the Hoyas numbers compared to PC for the year so far.

 

 

Some of the numbers that pop out are the following:

 

--Georgetown moves the ball well and is averaging 2 more assists/game than turnovers.  PC, on the other hand is still underwater in terms of assists vs. turnovers per game.

 

--Cooley’s team doesn’t rely as much on the three-pointer as the Friars.

 

--Surprisingly, the Hoyas haven’t scored many more points in Big East games than they have allowed. They have been a little tougher down the stretch in close games than PC.  The recent Georgetown win over Villanova at Villanova was a good example.  Georgetown came back from a 19-point deficit in the second half to win in the last second of play 64-63.

 

Neither team has a big-time stud scorer.  The Friars' top scorers, if you don’t include Hopkins’ 3 games, are Jayden Pierre at 12.6 pts/game, Bensley Joseph at 12.3 pts/game, and Wes Cardet at 10.2 pts/game—all very modest numbers.  And none of them are consistent scorers from one game to the next.  The Hoyas have four scorers all with comparable modest numbers:  forward Thomas Sorber at 14.2 pts/game, guard Micah Peavy at 13.9 pts/game, guard Jayden Epps at 13.3 pts/game, and guard Malik Mack at 13.3 pts/game.

 

Georgetown is winning more games than PC because of slightly better numbers in field goal and free throw percentage, and because of more steals.

 

Will the Friars, facing a better Georgetown squad this year, and without Devin Carter and likely without Hopkins, be able to find a way to beat their old coach?  Which Georgetown team will show up this Saturday at the AMP—the one that crushed Creighton by 27 points or the one that got flattened by DePaul?  Let’s hope it’s the latter.

 

Tip-off is this Saturday at 12:30 PM.