Ed Cooley Coaches Show Tonight 7-8pm on WEEI 103.7 Live From Audi Warwick #pcbb

The show will air live from 7-8pm on WEEI 103.7 and be streamed on Friars.com. I’ll update this post with a recap of what Coach Cooley and John Rooke discuss during the hour long program.

Click here to listen to the show via FriarTV

Here are some quotes from Coach Cooley from tonight’s radio show:

• Cooley on Tuesday night’s game against #9 Villanova: “I really appreciated our crowd. I appreciated the energy and enthusiasm that was in our building…that really makes a difference for our players and our program.”
• Cooley on how the atmosphere at the Dunk helps the program: “When you’re building a program, to be on national TV for your players that are coming next your to the players you’re currently recruiting, to the 9th graders and 10th graders that we’ve contacted to show some interest, it definitely sells.”
• Cooley on hearing “good try”: “I’m still pissed we lost…I hate hearing good try. At the end of the day it’s about winning.”
• Cooley on coming back and playing Nova after losing by 30 earlier in the season: “I give our team a ton of credit on the adjustments that we made, the little detail things.”
• Cooley on the chance to beat a top 10 team in conference play: “We appreciate Fox for the national coverage they give us but at the end of the day, I’m all about winning. It’s all about winning. Everybody can say ‘you don’t have this, you don’t have that’ but what we did have was an opportunity and that’s all you can ask for.”
• Cooley on Villanova: “I think Villanova is a Final 8, Final 4 team and if they get the right draw, they might win a National Championship again. They are a really hard to guard”
• Cooley on the strength of the Big East: “Everybody thought that at the beginning of the year that the power of the league wouldn’t be as it was before. It’s actually is equal or better than before.”
• Cooley on conference play: “Big East basketball, it was a classic Big East game the other night when we played Villanova, it’s back and forth, it’s physical, there’s bodies flying all over the place, technical fouls, I love it, ball kicked out of bounds, the referees are cussed out every two seconds, they’re yelling back at the coaches, there’s nothing like that. I love that.”
• Cooley on Butler: “Look at the margin when they play at home. They are unbelievable at home. We have a brutal game…that’s not a game where you’re just going to go there and just show up…we have to go in there and really battle, really fight.”
• Cooley on meaningful games in February: “We’re playing for a lot of pride…this is the first time in a long time for Providence College where we’re actually playing for something to get to that next level in our development of our program.”
• Cooley on the NCAA Tournament: “I talk to our players from the beginning of the year that we want to walk on that blue carpet (make the NCAA Tournament). We’ve talked about it the last couple of weeks…every time we come in the locker room after games I bring in this sheet and I put it on everybody’s chair and I say ‘this is how close we are, this is where we’re at’.”
• Cooley on Senior Night: “Whether we win all of our games or lose by a thousand, I think we owe it to the team to make sure that that building is rocking and rolling for those kid’s Senior Night.”
• Cooley on Cotton: “Everybody knows Bryce Cotton has to play basically every single minute and for him to do what he has done this year, its absolutely remarkable. Do I think Doug McDermott is probably the Player of the Year in the Big East this year? Yes, because he’s on the best team and he’s performing at the highest level every night. But when you look at who the most valuable player in the country is, not the player of the year, the most valuable player, Bryce Cotton is a runaway…He should go down as one of the all time greats to ever wear a Friar uniform. “
• Cooley on the system they brought to Providence: “Our guards are really, really aggressive…I want guards who are aggressive, that have incredible swag, that go out and say ‘this is not your court, this is my court’. I want all of our players to have that personality.”
• Cooley on the Seniors and Senior Night: “Senior night is always emotional for me…we did not recruit these young men but what we do do is appreciate them. I have seen them grow so much. I have seen Bryce, who was so shy and docile and not trusting…as a coach you have to get your player’s to trust you not just as a basketball coach. They gotta trust you as a mentor, someone who can help them, someone who has vision for them. You gotta really make sure you are bought into these players as much as they are bought into you. That’s what I feel with these gentlemen that will be playing their last Big East home game come March 4th…for those kids, on that night, it will be special for me. Although we didn’t recruit them, I have seen how Lee Goldsbrough has grown and changed, I have seen how Brice Kofane has grown and changed and Ted Bancroft…I told him I “
• Cooley on the opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament: “I think when you play in the NCAA Tournament it can change your life. I really do. I tell the players that. It gives you a totally different profile. People will remember you. You may get in that tournament and all of the sudden the right person will see you in the right game and the right shot. You never, ever, ever know.”
• Cooley on scheduling: “Quite frankly I don’t like it. Hopefully next year we do a better job. With the launching of our new league, when there wasn’t a Commissioner, the television people really took control of our schedule. First of all I don’t think it’s fair for us to play the amount of games in a short period of time and then have a long layoff. I think you’ve got to spread that over. We were on the road 8 out of 13 days. You play at night, you fly to another city, you practice that day then play the next night then fly home and expect our kids to be 4.0 students. You can’t get everything you want. I think we’ve got to do a much better job as we ‘re building our new Big East.”

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Mike Hopkins

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