NEW YORK — Ed Cooley has spent nearly a quarter-century in the BIG EAST, starting as an assistant to Al Skinner at Boston College before returning as a head coach, first at Providence and now at Georgetown.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the mystique of the conference, and of Madison Square Garden as its tournament host, has never been lost on him over the years.
He and his team get to experience it longer this season.
In a game that harkened back to the style that made the BIG EAST a household name among college basketball fans, Cooley’s Hoyas used a hard-nosed defensive effort to overcome DePaul on Wednesday, defeating the Blue Demons in the first round of the Big East tournament, 63-56.
With victories earlier in the day by Providence and Xavier, 11th-seeded Georgetown ensured that all three lower seeds prevailed on the opening day of what Cooley described as “no greater tournament in America.”
“Today was about our defense,” he said as the Hoyas held DePaul to just 34 percent shooting from the floor. “It was about our physicality. We were prepared, but I’m really proud of our guys. It’s been a long year for us with respect to coming down the stretch and losing games by a possession, losing at the buzzer.”
Georgetown had to overcome a 17-9 deficit in the opening minutes as DePaul fed off the momentum from a close to the regular season that earned the Blue Demons their highest-ever tournament seed since joining the Big East. But behind center Vince Iwuchukwu, the Hoyas methodically chipped away and slowly gained the initiative coming out of halftime.
“My teammates believed in me,” Iwuchukwu said after posting 14 points and 11 rebounds in the final 20 minutes of regulation, ending his night with 17 points and 14 boards. “They talked to me during halftime, telling me to keep my head up. I went out there and just played my heart out.”
“Vince won, and he had a carryover with that,” Cooley said of his center, who won a Big East championship last season at St. John’s. “When you’re trying to develop players, I think you have to be patient with development. All of us want it right away. I do know this in coaching: When big guys get it, they really excel.”
Still, DePaul fought back, using an 8-0 run to trim a 10-point deficit to two, at 44-42, with 6:35 remaining in regulation after a Kruz McClure three-pointer brought the Blue Demons to the doorstep. They would get no closer from there, however, as Georgetown dug deep and slammed the door on a comeback bid. An Iwuchukwu triple with 3:54 to play put the Hoyas up six at that juncture, with their advantage never falling below two possessions for the remainder of the game.
“I thought our effort was really good,” DePaul head coach Chris Holtmann lamented. “At the end of the day, the three in the corner was a tough one there in a possession game like that, with just a second or two on the (shot) clock.”
DePaul finishes the season 16-16, and while the sudden finality of the year is a bitter pill to swallow, it does not diminish the strides the program has made in Holtmann’s second year atop the masthead.
“Our guys wanted to be here for the duration,” he said. “But there were some real firsts that were accomplished this year, some things that hadn’t been done in a long time in this program. When I tell you it mattered to them, it mattered to them that this program took a step forward, and I don’t take that for granted as a head coach because it’s not as common anymore. They take pride in wearing DePaul.”
Georgetown lives to fight another day, however, and will face third-seeded Villanova in the quarterfinals. The storied rivalry with the Wildcats, which counts the 1985 national championship among its highlights, will be renewed for the 101st time. Cooley will match wits with his longtime friendly rival, Villanova head coach Kevin Willard, in the process, but downplayed the pageantry and the history Wednesday, focusing instead on the stakes of the matchup.
“I’m just looking at it as one game in order to advance,” Cooley said. “We’re going to have our hands full. They’re one of the better three-point shooting teams in our league, they have one of the best freshman point guards in the country (Acaden Lewis), they have an underestimated big guy in (Duke) Brennan, (Tyler) Perkins has played really well. We’ve got our hands full.”