New Georgetown basketball coach Ed Cooley has plans to change the culture and the win-loss record

WASHINGTON (AP) — At 2:29 p.m. on a recent weekday afternoon, Ed Cooley blew his whistle to start a Georgetown men’s basketball practice at the John R. Thompson Jr. Intercollegiate Athletic Center, then yelled, “Let’s go!” at players wearing navy T-shirts with “Hoya Family” written on the back.

Soon, with everyone gathered around him, Cooley — the new coach, hired away from Big East rival Providence — was talking to his team — a mostly new group filled with transfers — about “emotional physicality and physical physicality,” about how they were going to work on their first drill “until we get it right.”

For nearly 2 1/2 hours, Cooley alternately observed — arms crossed, rumpled piece of white paper in one hand — and offered stern guidance sprinkled with colorful language and wit (“We’re not trying to run a play; we’re trying to score!”). He criticized (“If he ever scored on me, I’d punch myself! Sometimes it’s not about your defense; it’s about your pride!”). He taught (“The best leaders overcommunicate” and “Always keep score; there’s always a winner and loser in life”). It’s a style Georgetown associate head coach Ivan Thomas, who was on Cooley’s Providence staff for eight years, describes as a mix of “a tsunami ... a galvanizer of people” and “Uncle Ed at the cookout.”

What was remarkable wasn’t so much how Cooley went about the business of turning around a once-proud program that became an afterthought while going 13-50 overall and 2-37 in the Big East the past two seasons under Patrick Ewing. What was most noteworthy: Cooley’s willingness to allow a reporter to observe the full session at the home of “Hoya Paranoia” in bygone days, when Thompson was the coach and Ewing was the star center for the 1984 NCAA champions.