PROVIDENCE – Ed Cooley’s personal trophy case increased by one significant piece of hardware.
The Providence College men’s basketball coach on Sunday was named the 2022 Werner Ladder Naismith Coach Of The Year, the highest national honor given to college basketball coaches for their performances this past season. Cooley received the award during the weekend’s NCAA Final Four festivities in New Orleans, which concludes Monday with the men’s national championship game between the University of North Carolina and the University of Kansas.
Cooley, PC said, is the first Friar coach to earn the Naismith Award. He is also the first PC men’s basketball coach to earn a national coach of the year accolades since Rick Pitino in 1987. Pitino, who led the Friars to the Final Four that year, earned the National Association of Basketball Coaches Coach of the Year. Cooley, a few weeks ago, also received the 2022 Big East Conference Coach of the Year Award.
The Naismith Award is one of 11 national college basketball coach of the year awards given out annually. Among the others are the Associated Press College Basketball Coach of the Year – which Cooley finished second in behind the University of Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd, who also received the NABC Division I Coach of the Year award for 2022. The 2022 Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year Award, given to the top Division I mid-major college basketball coach, was received by Norfolk State University’s Robert Jones.
In his acceptance speech on Sunday, Cooley – who grew up in Providence – said the Naismith Award is the “biggest team award a coach could have,” giving additional credit to his players and assistant coaches for what was a historic season for PC’s men’s basketball program. The team went 27-6 overall, including 14-3 in Big East Conference play, winning the program’s first-ever regular-season conference title in a year when PC was predicted to finish seventh in the Big East.
Additionally, the Friars this past year qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the sixth time in Cooley’s 11 seasons as head coach and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen round for the first time since 1997.
“This year’s team at Providence College was clearly connected, undervalued and overperformed,” Cooley said. “I can’t tell you the joy I had every single day [coaching]. When you have a team where there are no issues, where there’s no egos and the common goal was to just try to win. These young men did that.”
In addition to thanking current PC President Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard, Cooley also thanked both retiring Vice President and Director of Athletics Robert G. Driscoll Jr. and former PC president The Rev. Brian J. Shanley for “having the courage” to hire Cooley as coach of the men’s basketball program. Cooley in 2010 was brought on as PC’s first-ever Black head athletics coach.
Cooley called himself a “believer and a dreamer” and feels grateful for the opportunity to coach basketball, especially at the college in his home city.
“I appreciate the [voting] committee for allowing a young kid from south Providence to coach in the city that I love, to represent the state that I love and do something that no other person in the world can live in my skin and say ‘you’re there,’ ” Cooley said. “I’m here in the building with all this greatness.”
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
