On the verge of a second straight conference championship, on the brink of another opportunity to play the role of mid-major menace, Siena head coach Fran McCaffery couldn’t help but think of one thing as he stepped to the microphone in the post-game press conference.
‘The first thing I want to do is congratulate head coach Ed Cooley in what I thought was one of the best coaching jobs of the year,’ McCaffery said after the Saints 80-65 win over Fairfield. ‘To go through what they went through and be able to keep this team together, and get them to this point, is an amazing accomplishment for a young team.’
‘We knew we were going to get a great fight from them,’ McCaffery added.
A few hundred feet away, in the depths of the Times-Union Center in Albany, Cooley was addressing his team, the final in a laundry list of post-game speeches. Some were optimistic and hopeful, others were likely ruthless and harsh, and one in Manhattan was, well, tragic.
But when the third-year head coach emerged, head held high, and stepped to the same podium that McCaffery used as a platform to praise his peer, Cooley deviated from the typical coaching playbook of clichés and ‘We’ll get ’em next year’ rhetoric, which just about any coach in America would resort to regarding the improbable circumstances that defined Fairfield’s season.
Instead, he just talked.
He spoke softly. He spoke calmly. He spoke honestly.
‘We played a damn good team today, and hats off to them,’ Cooley said. It was a good year, and we look forward to competing again next year.’
‘I thought as a program we got better this year with all the adversity we faced,’ Cooley said. ‘I can’t tell you how proud I am of our kids, as I said yesterday. Hopefully this is a learning experience for us.’
Most of the words Cooley used ‘- pride, progress, a good year ‘- seemed incredible and ridiculous only six weeks earlier. In a period of 72 hours following the team’s loss to Manhattan on Jan. 26, the team lost senior guard Jon Han, who left the team for personal reasons, and forwards Warren Edney and Anthony Johnson, both of whom suffered season-ending injuries.
Throw in a nagging back injury for junior Greg Nero, who struggled mightily for weeks before leaving the team’s Jan. 30 game against Marist at which point he was shut down for the rest of the regular-season, and that’s four starters gone for Fairfield, the consensus pick as the conference’s second best team as the season began.
But you know that story. What most don’t know is the underdog story that followed.
Forward Yorel Hawkins thrived in the spot vacated by Edney. Beginning with the team’s Jan. 9 game against Loyola (Md.), Hawkins averaged over 13 points per game and topped double-digit points in 12 of 17 games. More importantly, he gained invaluable experience at a position that seemed to be destined for Edney this season and in the future.
If not for the injury, Hawkins and others may have toiled on the bench, and maybe even transferred after the season.
‘Had this not happen I don’t know if Lyndon becomes the player he has become, to see Jamal [Turner] blossom the way that he has blossomed, to put Mike Evanovich in a different role,’ Cooley said.
Despite the learning curve, Fairfield still enjoyed success. Following the team’s loss to Manhattan on Jan. 26, the Stags still managed to win five of the team’s last eleven games to secure Cooley’s first winning season in his tenure as head coach, as improbable a winning season as he or anyone could have possible imagined.
‘I think it can only help us,’ Cooley said of the hardships. ‘I thought a lot of our players got a lot of not only game experience, but preparation experience as well, and we had success.
‘Our program is in unbelievable shape for the future,’ Cooley said.
And with an eye turned toward the future, Cooley now carries the lessons he has learned from a torturous past.
‘I think I learned a lot about myself. To not give up on kids, to not give up on players that are in the program,’ Cooley said. ‘I think it helped me grow up a bit in a lot of ways. I have a lot to learn, but it definitely helped me see things a little differently and help us prepare differently.
‘It was a roller coaster six weeks; I would hope no coach would ever have to deal with this,’ Cooley concluded as he walked away, each step bringing next November a little bit closer.
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