What a Difference A Year Has Made for Ed Cooley and His Friars

When we polled Friar fans prior to last season, a mere 18.9% of them gave Ed Cooley an “A” for the entirety of his tenure at Providence College. A majority of voters (68.9%) gave him a “B,” while over 11% voted for a “C.”

This came after Cooley won a Big East Tournament title, reached five straight NCAA Tournaments from 2014-2018, and set a Providence record by winning 12 conference games prior to the 2020 season being cut short due to the pandemic.

The lack of a postseason in 2020 served to keep alive the quietly growing narrative in Providence that the Friars were sliding a bit in recent seasons. PC was an NIT team in 2019 when they bowed out quietly in the first round at home against Arkansas.

They were disjointed throughout the Covid-affected season of 2020-21, finishing 13-13, despite having a pair of all league players in David Duke and Nate Watson.

Cooley, justifiably, had a moment last year in which he pushed back on the narrative that his team hadn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2018. His 2020 club was potentially a five or six seed, and would have given Cooley six NCAA Tournament qualifiers in the eight seasons leading into last year, had the postseason not been canceled. Scorching heading into March, that group seemed primed to do damage in the NCAA Tournament.

The 2019-20 campaign was met with some qualifiers by those looking to make the case that Providence was in the midst of a three-year downward trajectory. They were a mess in November and December, but turned their season around by closing with six consecutive wins, and victories in eight of their final ten contests.

Some were downplaying that the 2020 team defeated five straight nationally ranked opponents to close that year — but that’s just where we stood entering the 2021-22 season. Opinions on the future of the program felt a bit more divisive.

The criticism wasn’t so much about all that had been accomplished under Cooley at Providence, but if momentum was slipping away. Had the Friars plateaued?

It felt as though Providence had turned a corner a few years prior and, fairly or unfairly, concern grew in certain corners of the fanbase that PC was trending downward just as UConn was re-entering the league.

Providence’s offense, typically hovering around 75th-100th in the country in efficiency in the post Bryce Cotton/Kris Dunn era, needed to be better if they wanted to do more damage in March (that ranking shot up from 96th to 36th in the country last season).

High school recruiting had dipped in terms of adding top 100 talent.

The spring of 2021 proved critical. With David Duke off to pursue his NBA dream, Cooley and his staff made a pair of critical transfer additions. While neither Al Durham or Justin Minaya looked like a potential savior at this time a year ago, both proved to be just what this program needed to take a giant step forward.

No one could have imagined just how critical both players would be in establishing the culture of toughness, maturity, selflessness, and poise that resulted in 27 wins last year.

Nate Watson and AJ Reeves believed enough in PC to stick around for their final years, and, from a development perspective, both Jared Bynum and Noah Horchler took massive steps forward.

Just like that, not only were the Friars back on the rise, they were far surpassing anything anyone could have asked for at this time a year ago.

There’s some irony in the fact that the 2021-22 Friars spent the majority of last season answering questions about just how good they were, despite what they had accomplished.

It took until a second round victory over Richmond for those questions to finally cease, and with a Sweet 16 appearance and a Naismith National Coach of the Year Award now in his back pocket, Ed Cooley slammed the door shut on questions about the direction this program was headed in under him.

Those questions weren’t nearly loud enough to call last season one of vindication for PC’s head coach, but the whispers that were getting somewhat louder last fall have since vanished.

Providence jumped all over the momentum from last season when hitting the recruiting trail this spring. We saw one of the all-time Friar recruiting flurries when, in one weekend, PC received commitments from a trio of talented transfers in Noah Locke (Louisville), Devin Carter (South Carolina), and Clifton Moore (La Salle). In that one weekend, the Friars added a player who shot 40% from three over three seasons in the SEC, an SEC All Freshman performer last year, and a top 15 shot blocker in the country.

The spring later brought the additions of a UConn transfer in Corey Floyd Jr. and a potential star in sophomore forward Bryce Hopkins from Kentucky.

Providence was recruiting from a position of power on the transfer market, and that continued into the summer when they added two of the biggest risers in high school basketball in Southern California Academy stars Garwey Dual and Drew Fielder.

Picked to finish seventh by the league’s coaches last fall, this year’s group was voted fifth, despite graduating five seniors and essentially only returning two players from last year’s rotation.

The 18.9% of fans that gave Cooley an “A” for his tenure at this time a year ago, has jumped to 67.2% this fall. The 11% that handed him a “C” are down to 0.8% now.

Coming off of their first Big East regular season title and the most victories that program has seen since 1974, the ceiling has now been raised in Friartown.

What a difference a year has made.