Having won Naismith College Coach of the Year and Big East Coach of the Year in 2022, Georgetown head coach Ed Cooley, in his first season leading the men’s basketball team, is one of many accomplished Black NCAA Division One head coaches. He began his head coaching career in 2006 at the helm of Fairfield University’s men’s basketball team. Cooley discussed the magic of Madison Square Garden with rolling out.
“Anytime you can play on Broadway on Friday night and Saturday night for [the] championship in this building, there’s no greater feeling in the world as a player, as an athletic director, as a coach, as a parent, as a partner,” he said. “That’s what we play for. And (today) this will be the most electric building, not in the country, but in the world. When you have all these big teams coming here, the fact that it’s here, we want to keep that partnership for as long as our league stays together. There’s nothing greater. Big East basketball is amazing, and the young men and women that play in this league, they’re very, very fortunate and don’t take it for granted…I still have that vivid memory of having that big dream, saying one day I want to be a head coach to do it.”
On winning the Big East Conference tournament, which he did once as an assistant coach at Boston College and again as head coach of the Providence Friars men’s basketball team, “I’m going to take you back to 2001 when I worked for one of the greatest mentors in basketball,” Cooley reflected. “His name’s (former Boston College head coach) Al Skinner. I remember being here. My daughter Josephine, who is now a Georgetown graduate, was probably five or six months old. I remember sitting on that floor as an assistant coach when we won the Big East Championship, and that gave me more joy, more energy, and more vision to say one day, as a head coach, I want to do that. I was fortunate to do it in the reorganization of the Big East. In 2014, we got to the ultimate game again, and it was a really, really tough game.”
Cooley closed with some words about Georgetown, the first team to win an NCAA Championship led by a Black head coach when John Thompson led Patrick Ewing and the Hoyas to the win.
“That day will come once again when we cut those nets down in a proud moment; it’s just not today,” he said. But that dream is alive for us to build this thing [into] a national monster.”
The Big East Conference Tournament begins today with three games, continues tomorrow with the quarterfinals, and concludes Friday with the semifinals, all on FS1. The championship will air on Fox nationally on Saturday.
