Ex-coaches returning for a game...

[Rhody15]

Also.

If I was a PC fan, I wouldn’t be on a URI message board hours after beating Georgetown, but that’s just me.

[rjsuperfly66]

Also.

If I was a PC fan, I wouldn’t be on a URI message board hours after beating Georgetown, but that’s just me.

Me being a college basketball fan doesn't played because we just had a game.
I'm out and about and on the site anyway following the game thread because it's better than hitting refresh on the play-by-play.

[Rhody15]

Also.

If I was a PC fan, I wouldn’t be on a URI message board hours after beating Georgetown, but that’s just me.

Me being a college basketball fan doesn't played because we just had a game.
I'm out and about and on the site anyway following the game thread because it's better than hitting refresh on the play-by-play.

I didn’t read all your posts in the thread, but would you agree with me that the booing and chants were completely warranted today, but going forward the hype on this game will subdue and Cooley will eventually be welcomed back and cheered?

[rjsuperfly66]

Also.

If I was a PC fan, I wouldn’t be on a URI message board hours after beating Georgetown, but that’s just me.

Me being a college basketball fan doesn't played because we just had a game.
I'm out and about and on the site anyway following the game thread because it's better than hitting refresh on the play-by-play.

I didn’t read all your posts in the thread, but would you agree with me that the booing and chants were completely warranted today, but going forward the hype on this game will subdue and Cooley will eventually be welcomed back and cheered?

It's an interesting question - It came up on the postgame radio show and the conversation was centered around that as many of the current students graduate, the hate/booing will also cool. I don't think he'll be warmly received in the Amp as long as he is the coach at Gtown, but I think he'll be seen more in the vain of a Calhoun/Boeheim was and less like Cooley the traitor, and once his coaching career is over, I see him being welcomed back and revered for his achievements once he is not coaching that league foe.

[dmac80]

Disclaimer, Friar fan here.

I must object to the whole "Georgetown is a better job" take. It's lazy imo. Maybe it could be...but right now man it's bad. Their fanbase is gutted. They struggle to give tickets away. No one is watching them on TV either.

When Providence was in a prolonged down time (right before Cooley) we still averaged like low to mid 7,000 in the arena....Georgetown has some really paltry crowds. Cooley being hired and amidst the hoopla of a rebirth of the program still no one seems to care.

Yeah they have a good history (mainly 80s and 90s) and have tailed off for some time now. Can they come back? Maybe.

Meanwhile all credit to Cooley for rebuilding Providence to long dormant heights (we have a very rich history going back many decades with a who's who of hall of fame coaches and players)...let's not act like the history and fans of Providence didn't exist pre Cooley.....but credit where due - he left that insanity on display today: a rabid cult like fanbase that sells out the arena for mostly the entire BE slate, 12,400 a night. One of the top 5 or 10 home court atmospheres in the country, an engaged community around the program, state if the art on campus facilities, and a chance to build on the success he already achieved....all to play in a morgue of an NBA arena in front of 2500 fans and a disengaged community.

As fir Salary he was already handsomely paid at providence. Top 25 in America. He had been upped several times already but Providence was offering close to what he ended up with at Georgetown. Which would have been our ceiling obviously...could Georgetown go even higher with their bottomless endowment and donor base? Yes. But salary wasn't the issue at all here.

I'm just not sold on Georgetown being a better place. I think in a few years if Kim English lands some of the parade of 5*s he's had in on OFFICIAL visits already (we just got a committment from one fringe 5* top 25 center) we can be a perennial top 3 program in the BE while Cooley is destined for TV post coaching sooner than later.

[steviep123]

Georgetown is perhaps a marginally better job due to historical prestige. The reality is he has the same staff, worse resources, a comparable salary, a higher cost of living, an apathetic fan base not showing up to games or funding NIL, while playing in the same conference. Yes, it's a challenge. For a guy who wanted to retire in 5 years, any rational person would say "why take on a massive rebuild?" Gtown was no slam dunk, 2 tournament appearances in the last decade, 1 tournament win in the last decade, 3 tournament wins since their final four in 2007. You can spin it how you want, a guy deciding to leave midseason and giving up on his team for minimal gain is a horrendous look. This isn't Dan Hurley going to UCONN for way more money, way better resources, a better conference, etc.

URI mostly matched Hurley's salary at uconn.

They did make a last ditch offer that DH seemed to struggle with - made it much harder for him to leave, but the real issue was never really salary but the infrastructure to become a perpetual winner. They did put a lot of that in place eventually and is why they have Archie Miller, but would have been better if it were in place in 2015 or so and they have a better shot at keeping DH (he probably still leaves for UConn, but we have a better class of replacements than what was rumored at the time before the Cox error).

[steviep123]

My take on all this as one of the few URI fans, that really doesn't care what PC does outside of a game in early December each year (I did used to hate PC due to the unbalanced coverage in the projo - but having moved out of state, I have to go out of my way to find info on PC which I have no desire to do. I barely have the time to follow my own team let alone another time I have no interest in).

Anyway, I agree with a lot of posters here in the way Cooley left did leave a lot to be desired. I think the huge difference is with Cooley, everything was all said and done before the season and was made pretty public. Comparing to DH or most other coaches leaving isn't ideal. While it was likely a foregone conclusion that DH was gone, nothing was finalized or public until after the season was over and he did take a hard look at URI's counter offer. I do think if Cooley moved on quietly without the fanfare and was upfront, there'd be a lot less griping.

[Rhody15]

My take on all this as one of the few URI fans, that really doesn't care what PC does outside of a game in early December each year (I did used to hate PC due to the unbalanced coverage in the projo - but having moved out of state, I have to go out of my way to find info on PC which I have no desire to do. I barely have the time to follow my own team let alone another time I have no interest in).

Anyway, I agree with a lot of posters here in the way Cooley left did leave a lot to be desired. I think the huge difference is with Cooley, everything was all said and done before the season and was made pretty public. Comparing to DH or most other coaches leaving isn't ideal. While it was likely a foregone conclusion that DH was gone, nothing was finalized or public until after the season was over and he did take a hard look at URI's counter offer. I do think if Cooley moved on quietly without the fanfare and was upfront, there'd be a lot less griping.

“Really doesn’t care what PC does”

*Has multiple posts in the thread about Cooley returning to play PC*

[steviep123]

My take on all this as one of the few URI fans, that really doesn't care what PC does outside of a game in early December each year (I did used to hate PC due to the unbalanced coverage in the projo - but having moved out of state, I have to go out of my way to find info on PC which I have no desire to do. I barely have the time to follow my own team let alone another time I have no interest in).

Anyway, I agree with a lot of posters here in the way Cooley left did leave a lot to be desired. I think the huge difference is with Cooley, everything was all said and done before the season and was made pretty public. Comparing to DH or most other coaches leaving isn't ideal. While it was likely a foregone conclusion that DH was gone, nothing was finalized or public until after the season was over and he did take a hard look at URI's counter offer. I do think if Cooley moved on quietly without the fanfare and was upfront, there'd be a lot less griping.

“Really doesn’t care what PC does”

*Has multiple posts in the thread about Cooley returning to play PC*

You must be confusing me with someone else. I literally had 2 posts on this thread. This one you responded to and one moments before which I gave a response to another poster. Period.

[Blue Man]

Catching up on this so apologize if I double up on some thoughts.

Firstly, fuck Ed Cooley.

There's literally nothing that we can compare to relative to what he did to PC.

This guy was a God. I think most PC fans didn't think he was the best x's and o's coach. But he was a total embodiment of Providence and made it a great story. Local kid grows up to coach local team. Called it his dream job, his lifetime job. He was a well paid coach at PC so far above the success he had brought. Moreover the entire culture/identity was wrapped up in PC being his dream job. Us. We. Together yada yada yada - it was all based on the fact that this was home.

He legitimately built PC into a first class program. The donations. The NIL. The facilities. He got that team to a Sweet 16 and took a tight loss to the eventual champions. I would argue he took the most veteran team in the NCAA as far as they took themselves, and no further. But he still put that team together and had consistently been a championship level program in a conference that has produced 4 of the last 9 NCAA champions.

To act like a rebuild at Georgetown is somehow closer to "winning a national championship" than the turnkey program he had at PC is a joke. No one cares about GT basketball, it's not the 80's, he's not John Thompson, and with the NIL money Providence has it's not like GT is going to get kids he never had a chance at.

The funnier thing is that his whole recruiting schtick revolved around being the hometown kid and a hero. He can't use that anymore.

It's just pathetic that he can't keep his dick in his pants and his wife gave him an ultimatum to save face basketball-wise so he could pretend to be the "good guy" instead of just taking his poor decision making on the chin and living with the consequences of his actions. He could've easily signed a lifetime contract at PC after his divorce making all the money he'd lose back.

But the even worse thing, is how he went about this. Mid-season distraction and collapse after their Georgetown game where everyone knows Cooley met with their leadership to negotiate a deal. What happened after? Losers of 4 straight to close it out, their last 2 home games, an asskicking in the first round of the Big East paired with a a first round NCAA waxing. Meeting with an in-conference foe and negotiating a contract mid-season, in person, while your team is playing at said rival. Actively recruiting kids committed to PC to come with you to your new job THE NIGHT BEFORE AN NCAA game.

Sorry, that's a piece of shit move. He's a piece of shit in his personal life and his professional life. And this was his home - these were his people. That's so much worse than anything that could've been done to us.

Moreover it directly led to the wasting of what was going to be a potentially brilliant season for PC.

I will not stand for one single untruth about Dan Hurley and the departure from URI. It's very clear that UConn move was in motion from the second he got burned by Dave Dooley not committing a single penny more to basketball infrastructure in 2017 after our first NCAA in 19 years.

Considering that everyone on here agrees that the UConn thing was in the works early on, like with the hiring of Tom Moore - did it distract that URI team? Nope. They had the best A10 season they've ever had, outright regular season championship, close loss in the A10 tournament final, highest seed ever given to URI, won a first round game and then got a bad luck matchup in the 2nd round against Duke.

How did Dan leave us? I mean we got our best and highest rated recruiting class ever, kept them together. Told all our talented kids to stay. Jeff Dowtin, Fatts, Cyril - all could've left to follow Danny, but stayed put at Hurley's request.

When did Dan sell his house? Try end of July after the season. He commuted to Storrs for months. His focus was on giving URI everything he had before he or even his family focused on anything else during the entirety of his time here. He ended up leaving for much more than just money - it was resources, institutional support, and the ability to just coach basketball - not deal with all the other stuff that he had to do at URI.

Dan didn't grow up here. Dan promised to return URI to glory and he did. He did it ethically, classily, and certainly met or exceeded everyone's expectations of him taking on our total rebuild. He didn't drag URI through endless rumors, he squashed them immediately every single year and leveraged them to force the school to make more commitments to the entire basketball program through his contract re-negotiations.

He's also a good family man and not a piece of shit.

No one should ever compare Hurley and Cooley, as Dan is as superior a coach and man as Ed could ever pretend to be.

On a personal note I always liked Ed. Had plenty of conversations. He knew people in my family from growing up. We actually wound up doing food shopping at the same time in the same place and had a running joke about it for a while. Tough guy to hate when you got to know him - but holy hell do you actually realize what an absolute fake, garbage pail human he actually is. Like for everyone on here with a hard on for Pitino, how you'd let this fraud skate is beyond me.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.