The first time an Ed Cooley-coached team faced a Kevin Willard-coached team was Jan. 18, 2008.
Willard’s Iona College team defeated Cooley’s Fairfield University squad 67-52. Over 18 years later, both coaches have climbed the ranks to the Big East, but Willard still took the win.
Cooley’s Georgetown University men’s basketball team (13-11, 5-8 Big East) fell 80-73 to Willard’s Villanova University Wildcats (18-5, 9-3 Big East) after the Hoyas blew a halftime lead behind turnovers and missed 3-pointers at Capital One Arena on Feb. 7.
The Hoyas won the tip and got the ball out to sophomore forward Caleb Williams in transition. Williams, fouled going up for a layup, converted both of his free throws and took an early 2-0 lead.
Georgetown played well early and opened up a narrow lead through physical paint efforts. The Hoyas had drawn 5 fouls by the under-16 media timeout, powering them up to a 17-15 lead early on. The strong offense continued until the under-12 timeout — Georgetown was shooting 73% at that break — but after the Hoyas went on a dry spell, bringing Villanova back into the game.
The two teams continued to trade possessions, but neither was able to put together much of a run for the remainder of the first half. When the Hoyas jumped out to a 37-31 lead off a few second-chance points at 3:12, the Wildcats responded right away. Georgetown held Villanova at 2 possessions for most of the rest of the period, taking a 40-37 lead into the break.
In the second half, Willard’s squad took control early, scoring the first 6 points within 2 minutes. From there, the Wildcats were successfully able to put the Hoyas on their back foot even while the lead continued to change hands. Georgetown began to turn the ball over more — of the Hoyas’ 14 turnovers, 9 came in the second half. Villanova took advantage, scoring 23 points off turnovers.
After the game, Cooley said those turnovers were the critical factor in his team’s loss.
“Would’ve. Could’ve. Should’ve,” Cooley said to open his post-game press conference. “I talk to my men all the time, and I just left the locker room, where I talked to them about little things during the course of the game.”
Cooley added that his players were too content with apologizing for mistakes instead of not making them to begin with.
“In today’s world, the kids with the ‘my bad’s come up to us today. To a coach, we had a ‘my bad’ during that game,” he said.
Still, Georgetown remained in the game. By the under-8 timeout, the Hoyas trailed narrowly, 62-59. In that stretch, junior guard Malik Mack singlehandly kept the game close — sinking 2 3-pointers, drawing a foul on another 3-point attempt and dishing to senior center Vince Iwuchukwu for a slam dunk. That run, behind Mack, tied the game at 66 with under six minutes to play.
Mack finished with 21 points, 3 3-pointers, 3 rebounds and 3 assists.
The Wildcats looked to be teetering on the verge of giving up the lead. From there, though, the Hoyas failed to take advantage. A few possessions later, sophomore forward Isaiah Abraham fouled Villanova guard Tyler Perkins, who was shooting from the corner.
Cooley pointed to that foul as one of the moments that lost the game, saying it showed a lack of “emotional intelligence.”
“It was just asinine,” Cooley said. “That we had that foul there really, really bothered me.”
However, the Wildcats failed to take full advantage, with Perkins hitting just 1 of his 3 free throws. In fact, Villanova shot a terrible 50% from the charity stripe, and still pulled out the lead as the Hoyas intentionally fouled down the stretch.
Georgetown, with under four minutes to play, crawled back to a 70-68 deficit. However, Villanova guard Acaden Lewis called game. Lewis, a Washington, D.C. native who played with Williams and Mack in high school, savored every moment of his homecoming.
Lewis drained 2 consecutive 3-pointers, putting the game nearly out of reach at 77-69 with 106 seconds remaining on the clock. Lewis averages under 25% from the 3-point line this season, but said he feels his confidence was not affected in clutch time.
“This was a great homecoming,” Lewis said after the game. “I got a lot of family that’s about to come see me once I get out of here.
“I know how to shoot the ball,” Lewis added. “I just got to keep going out there and proving it, especially when, like today, it was a big game. Those two I hit were pretty big, so a big confidence boost for me.”
Lewis’s impressive final statline for his homecoming was 26 points, 3 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals.
Even as the game remained within 2 possessions, Georgetown started to chuck up desperation 3-point attempts instead of looking inside for a quick layup. Cooley said those shots were another aspect of the game he disliked, and his players were going against his instructions to seek layups.
“The command was coming from the bench to get to the basket,” Cooley said. “Players sought or did try to do something different.”
“That was something that we practiced, and something that we wanted to do. We just didn’t execute,” he added.
Still, despite the hard-fought game, Willard and Cooley remain close off the court and competitive on the court, with both saying they value their friendship and playing against each other.
“I steal all of his out-of-bounds plays,” Willard told The Hoya. “Ed’s a very dear friend of mine.”
Cooley said he concurred.
“I’m very close to Kevin,” Cooley told The Hoya. “We’ve coached a Pan American team together, so we kind of know each other’s offensive and defensive standpoints. They were very fortunate to win in our building today, which doesn’t make me happy. Yet, we have an opportunity to see them in the Big East tournament.”
Georgetown has the next week off before traveling to Storrs, Conn., to face the No. 3 University of Connecticut Huskies (22-2, 12-1 Big East) at 8 p.m. Feb. 14.
