Providence’s Win Over Georgetown Was the Perfect Cap to Its Ed Cooley Breakup

The Friars’ 84–76 victory over their former coach created an unreal atmosphere at Amica Mutual Pavilion.

One of the many staples of a gameday at Providence’s Amica Mutual Pavilion is Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me.” It may not quite be what “Everytime We Touch” is for Duke or what “Jump Around” is for Wisconsin football, but Providence’s students have been belting out the lyrics to a Swift classic for a number of years during late-game media timeouts.

But when the song came on Saturday during the Friars’ highly anticipated matchup with Georgetown—the first since longtime coach Ed Cooley left Providence for Washington D.C.—it was hard not to feel a bit of added meaning in the song’s lyrics.

You could poll 10 Providence fans on why they were most upset about Cooley’s sudden departure for a Big East rival last spring. Some will allege he checked out late last season with his mind on a move to the Hoyas. Others will point to Cooley, a Providence native, often calling Providence his dream job throughout his tenure. Other unsubstantiated claims have spread like wildfire throughout the internet in the last 10 months. The final product: Cooley essentially being named Public Enemy No. 1 in Rhode Island.

Whichever theory you subscribe to, the root of them all is the natural feeling most college sports fans have had at least once in their cheering lifetimes: The idea that the place they invest countless hours of energy, and often plenty of money, into isn’t enough. Cooley has made big talk of helping Georgetown compete for national championships again, of recruiting the nation’s best players. Cooley today called his departure a personal and business decision and said he thinks Providence can compete for championships, but it’s easy enough for a Friar fan to interpret his decision to leave as saying otherwise.

“Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time,” is a classic line from Swift’s 2008 hit. Sound familiar? Providence fans may be happy now to have moved on from Cooley, but there’s a certain “little brother” dynamic at play here. It’s the chip on the shoulder of a program, city and state that truly believes it can compete amongst college basketball’s elite, yet still lost its coach to a program that had gone 2–37 in Big East games the last two years. And that, at its core, felt like the root of every expletive hurled at Cooley Saturday.

The crowd was relentless, the game seeming at times merely an excuse to finally give Friars fans their few hours of unrelenting jeers at their former coach. Swaths of media members crowded the Georgetown tunnel to film a stoic Cooley’s first steps back onto the Providence court. Fans booed so loudly during Cooley’s introduction that his name couldn’t even be heard over the noise. The student section in the end zone closest to Providence’s bench sometimes attempted to launch a “We Love English” chant, a nod to the Friars’ new coach Kim English. Those never caught on quite the same as the “F— Ed Cooley” jeers, though. Maybe they will in future meetings, especially if English proves himself the coaching star athletic director Steve Napolillo bet big on to replace Cooley after just two years of head coaching experience. But today was about Cooley’s return, no matter how hard both head coaches tried to downplay their own importance to the matchup.

Friars guard Devin Carter dribbles the ball against the Georgetown Hoyas :: Eric Canha/USA TODAY Sports

Of course, that made today an essential win for English and the Friars. From purely an NCAA tournament bubble standpoint, a loss to 8–11 Georgetown would have been catastrophic. But for the long term, English failing to beat Cooley even in the Hoyas’ rebuilding year, in a game treated by Friars fans everywhere as Providence’s Super Bowl, would have been remembered for a long time.

To illustrate that, English told a story in his postgame press conference he has referenced many times before. Ever since the Big East schedule came out in the fall, English has been approached non-stop by students on Providence’s campus excited about Jan. 27. No matter how many times English tried reminding them that the season begins on Nov. 6, it was this day that was always going to define his first season in Friartown.

“This game obviously meant a lot, but I still don’t think they’d want us to go 1–29 or 1–30,” English said.

There were some nervy moments late in that pursuit. Providence led for nearly 30 minutes of the 40 and for most of the second half, but saw a lead of as much as 12 vanish as the clock ticked down. Perhaps the best way of setting the scene of this game is to tell you that the student section was still chanting “F— Ed Cooley” in a tie game with three minutes to go and Georgetown set to inbound with the shot clock at five. Hoyas guard Jayden Epps delivered quite the silencer, drilling a three off a screen to give Georgetown its first lead of the second half and officially spike the panic meters in the arena.

But in the end, this was always Providence’s day. Perhaps fittingly, it was one of Cooley’s former recruits to Providence, star guard Devin Carter, that carried the Friars across the finish line. He made dazzling plays late, capped by a steal and windmill flush that sent the arena into an absolute frenzy, with beer cans flying through the air (fortunately, none made their way onto the court or near the Georgetown bench, as was feared by many pregame). That scene, and the player that ignited it, was a reminder that Cooley left behind a healthy program, one in far better shape than the one he inherited at Georgetown.

“The energy that’s around the city, around the game, I was proud of that. Honestly, I was proud of that because when we came here 13 years ago, that wasn’t there,” Cooley said. “I was proud … that I had a small piece of the energy that was in here today.”

Georgetown coach Cooley (left) watches Providence players during a game at Amica Mutual Pavilion :: Eric Canha/USA TODAY Sports

But that didn’t seem to produce any regret from Cooley. If he can be taken at his word, that this decision was a personal one, that he now gets joy from the opportunity to walk to work every day and have morning coffee with his wife Nurys and daughter Olivia (a recent Georgetown graduate), then enduring the brutal losses that come with rebuilding a program and even deal with all the vitriol from his home city is worth it.

Maybe one day, we’ll talk about this marriage that once seemed like it would never end as one that had to end. Cooley will, with little doubt, get Georgetown back to competitiveness (if not national prominence). English has already signed one fringe five-star recruit in Oswin Erhunmwunse and hosted another top recruit in 2025 five-star Bryson Tiller today. He has the Friars in position for a trip to the NCAA tournament despite losing star forward Bryce Hopkins for the season due to a torn ACL. Maybe English can bring Providence to the heights others weren’t sure were possible and help the Friars shed some of that little brother ethos.

Today, though, was a necessary step in this bitter breakup. It was hardly comfortable for anyone. But it produced an atmosphere unlike anything we’ve seen in college basketball in quite awhile and a game no Friars fan who spent months trying to understand why their star coach and favored son had walked away will forget anytime soon.