Should Georgetown fans be worried?

It’s still early, but the Ed Cooley era is off to a shaky start

Photo credit: AP

On March 22, 2023, Ed Cooley was announced as the new Georgetown head men's head basketball coach. It was a titanic moment in Big East history. After six putrid seasons under legendary alumnus Patrick Ewing, who bottomed the program out with six- and seven-win campaigns in the final two, Georgetown brass finally showed the kind of eff-you ambition its fans had long been begging for, using legacy appeal and a $6 million-per-year (!) contract to steal a proven success out of his comfortable fief and away from a conference rival.

This was a huge deal. Cooley became the first coach in Big East history to leave one of its schools for another. Nor did he play down the significance of his arrival. “It is divine providence that I’m here,” Cooley famously said. “I needed a change. I wouldn’t change unless it provided an unbelievable opportunity. … If I’m the head coach at Georgetown, anything is possible.”

For all of the elevated rhetoric — at one point Cooley imagined what he'd say to Ian Eagle when the Hoyas were playing for a national title — the realpolitik for Georgetown decision-makers was less lofty, less about ceiling than floor. After years of total irrelevance, after almost a decade of dead home crowds and checked-out students, hiring Cooley guaranteed a return to at least a baseline level of competence. It was a path to get back into tourney-level performance immediately.

Yes, sure, Georgetown wanted more than that, and with the Hoyas' facilities and resources, Cooley could be expected to build on his mostly solid Providence output, to excel proportionally to the ostensible relative size of the programs.

But, primarily, consistency and stability is what he would offer. It was the reason to prefer him to Rick Pitino, a bonafide legend and meteoric personality who might retire in the next few years, and who was openly interested in the position before being rebuffed and taking the job at St. John's two days earlier. Cooley, in theory, could be your coach for the next decade-plus, and could be reasonably expected, with minimal drama, to make the tournament every year.

He would, first of all, make Georgetown decent again.

It is one of the enduring surprises of the 2023-24 season that this did not happen. Georgetown was every bit as bad as they ever were under Ewing last season, so bad that the entire premise of Cooley's hire should come under at least some amount of scrutiny. After generally rejoicing in his hire, Georgetown fans could be forgiven for wondering: What if this just doesn't work?