Big East power shift

After four days of non-stop hoops, one could assume Monday would be calm and quiet on the news front, right?

Not quite. Some massive — albeit largely expected — coaching changes disturbed the peace. A long-tenured coach left his hometown school while a titan of the ranks returned to the big leagues.

So who's up next? What's the fallout? We're here to break it down.

Let's get to the news.

1. Georgetown gets its man

Well, it happened.

Ed Cooley, Providence's native son and the man that pulled the Friars up from the bottom of the Big East and into prominence, is heading to Georgetown. He's leaving home for a Big East rival after rumors about this decision ultimately torpedoed what could have been another Sweet 16 season for the Friars.

It's hard to fault Cooley for this decision.

He's getting a healthy pay bump to move to DC. He's taking over a program that has an objectively higher ceiling than Providence. He'll have the chance to get out of the bubble that is being the Providence coach in Providence. Ed Cooley has always admired John Thompson Jr., the legendary architect of Hoya Paranoia, and this was an opportunity that he, clearly, could not pass up.

So I get it.

And I also love it from the Georgetown perspective for a multitude of reasons.

For starters, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Cooley's coaching acumen. I've seen enough Big East basketball over the years to know that he routinely had teams outperform their talent level. He was the first coach to win a Big East regular season title with the Friars. Ever! Rick Pitino coached there. So did Rick Barnes and Pete Gillen. He's a master game planner who isn't afraid to roll the dice and throw something different at you that you haven't seen on tape.

Most importantly, he has the gift of gab. He's incredibly personable, liked by everyone (outside of Friartown) and should be able to, at least in theory, navigate the murky waters that come with recruiting the DMV. (He's already working the portal.) I've heard that Georgetown will be loosening the purse strings when it comes to NIL as well. Part of me is still waiting to actually see Cooley coach a game before I fully believe he isn't going to pull a Dana Altman. But I'm not sure Cooley would even be welcomed back at this point.

That said, when you leave home, you do so knowing that your job is no longer perpetually safe. Shaka Smart left VCU and then parted ways with Texas after he earned a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament. Chris Mack left Xavier for Louisville, and just 18 months after becoming the No. 1 team in the country, he agreed to a buyout with the program.

Those guys both made the right decision to take the bigger job. It's hard to find fault with Cooley doing so, too.

But it's not always easy.

2. St. John's swings for the fences with Rick Pitino...

If things weren't already wild enough in the Big East, Rick Pitino is headed to St. John's.

The greatest college basketball coach of our generation is back in the Big East, back to Madison Square Garden, back to the sport's biggest stage.

Pitino is coming off of his third season at Iona, where his Gaels finished 27-8 and made the NCAA tournament for the second time in his tenure. The rumors had been boiling for a couple of weeks that Pitino would head to Queens after the season, and on Monday afternoon, that became official.

Pitino is a Hall of Famer. He won a pair of national titles (regardless of what the official NCAA rule book says). He took Providence to a Final Four. He's an elite defensive mind that should thrive with the talent in and around New York City. The concern with coaches from his generation is whether or not they are willing to deal with NIL and the transfer portal. While that was always a question mark, Pitino taking this job signifies he's fine dealing with it.

Or at least hiring someone to deal with it for him.

Either way, this is the perfect hire for the Johnnies.

This is a program that needs a reboot, and Pitino is the ideal short-term solution. He's not going to be coaching for 10, 15 or 20 more years, but he'll be around long enough to make the Johnnies relevant again.

And that's what matters most.

3. ... but stumbles with Anderson decision

Speaking of St. John's, can you just pay Mike Anderson his money?

Anderson was fired by cause by St. John's. Here's the report from ESPN:

Uh-huh.

You're concerned about a coach's behavior reflecting positively on the school, and you're hiring ... Rick Pitino?

C'mon, man.

Pay Mike Anderson the $11 million he is owed. He wasn't the answer, going just 68-46 overall and 30-46 in Big East play, but trying to fire a person for cause when you just wanted to move on cheapens everything.

4. Who's next at Providence?

The name that I have heard the most regarding the opening at Providence is George Mason coach Kim English. He's a Missouri alum who played in the NBA for a couple of years before stints on staff at Tulsa, Colorado and Tennessee. Micah Shrewsberry, the Penn State coach and a former staffer of Brad Stevens' with the Boston Celtics, is reportedly in the mix as well.

Personally, I think that Kimmie is going to be a superstar.

As of today, he doesn't have a résumé that will jump off the page. But he's a sharp basketball mind who can recruit and operate in the transfer portal and NIL era. He's someone that has an edge to him that I believe Providence fans would take to. You're betting on him now because if you wait 2 to 3 years, I don't think you'll be able to hire him at Providence. A decisive hire also would help Providence potentially retain Top 100 recruit Garwey Dual, along with any other Friars who are considering the transfer portal.

As far as the Billy Donovan links — and by links, I mean the people on Twitter and message boards begging for him to come back — I don't think it's happening.

5. OK, here's one NCAA tourney headline

Coaching news dominated Monday's news, but we still wanted to offer one headline on the Big Dance.

So I broke down the thing that intrigues me the most heading into the Sweet 16. In a word? Guards.

LaVall Jordan and John Fanta don't really disagree, either. Fanta went off on a tangent, but I didn't hate it.

Grind it out

We're two days away from NCAA Tournament games, but there are four games tonight to tide you over. The best one? The NIT matchup between North Texas (28-7) and Oklahoma State (20-15) in Stillwater. First one to 60 wins? (7 pm ET, ESPN)

More games to watch (All times ET)

• Wisconsin (19-14) at Oregon (21-14), 9 pm (ESPN)

• Eastern Kentucky (22-13) at Southern Utah (24-12), 7 pm (ESPN2)

It's Miller time

Former Field of 68 analyst (that's how people refer to Sean Miller, right?) and current Xavier coach Sean Miller discussed what it was like getting back to the Sweet 16 in just his first season with the Musketeers, adjusting to playing without Zach Freemantle, and much more.

Subscribe to The Field of 68 on YouTube here and subscribe here to AFTER DARK.

Links as you start to bust out your springwear.

• St. Francis (NY) is expected to cut all athletic programs following a campus relocation.

• Fairleigh Dickinson's upset of Purdue grabbed 4.37 million viewers, the best first-round game on cable since 2011.

• Providence's Jared Bynum became the latest big name to go portaling.

• A handful of other notable names entered the transfer portal: Temple's Damian Dunn, Bradley's Rienk Mast, and a bunch of Northwestern State players.

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