He liked the kid from the first moment he saw him play. He was long, rangy and skilled for his size. Competitive, too. He was highly regarded nationally but not so coveted that they would have to beat out the elite blue-chip programs to get him. The kid came from a nice family in Los Angeles, and though it was a long way from home, he seemed intrigued by the idea of playing for Boston College.

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The kid liked him, too, although that was no surprise. Ed Cooley was hard not to like, and hard not to notice. He had a big frame with a personality to match. When he walked into a gym, the kid knew he was there. When they talked on the phone, the kid felt he had known him his whole life. “Coach Cooley was always very relatable,” Brandon Bowman recalls. “He was down to earth, but he still had that smooth, flashy swagger about him.”

Cooley was in his fifth season as an assistant at BC under head coach Al Skinner. As the program’s primary West Coast recruiter, it was not uncommon for him to make five or six trips to L.A. in a month. Many of those visits lasted just one day. Cooley would take the first flight out of Boston, catch the redeye home, and go straight to campus for a full day of work. He was a grinder if ever there was one.

Cooley bird-dogged Bowman throughout his junior season at Westchester High School. After Bowman blew up on the summer circuit, Cooley knew he needed to convince him to take an official campus visit. So he told Skinner they should make their case to Bowman in person that September. Skinner was scheduled to see a recruit in Houston that week, so he suggested they meet in L.A.

The plan was set. Cooley bought a ticket on the same early flight out of Logan Airport he had taken countless times: American Airlines, Flight 11. The departure date was September 11, 2001.

It speaks volumes about Cooley’s charisma that he was considered “relatable” by a teenage boy whose background was so different than his own. Cooley was one of nine children raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in South Providence, R.I. He was saved by the generosity of a local family who let him live with them throughout high school. After excelling for the basketball team at Providence’s Central High School, Cooley spent a year at a prep school in New Hampshire and then went on to play for Stonehill College, a Division II school in Easton, Mass. He coached in high school and college for a few years before joining Skinner’s staff at the University of Rhode Island in 1996.

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Cooley followed Skinner to BC when he got hired the following season, but he continued to live in Providence. His wife, Nurys, was a school resource officer with the city’s police department. The arrangement forced Cooley to commute to Boston almost every day. The drive could take one to three hours, depending on traffic.

Bowman, on the other hand, was raised by two parents in the well-to-do neighborhood of Santa Monica. He had a natural gift — and love — for basketball, and he had access to all of the elite local grassroots programs. Bowman had always heard that West Coast players were too soft to play back East, and he was determined to debunk that perception. He was especially enamored of the Big East, which included 14 teams (including BC) and was by far the best basketball conference in the country.

Bowman’s recruitment ticked up considerably over the summer. After he played well at the Nike All-America Camp in Indianapolis in early July, Georgetown assistant Ronny Thompson followed Bowman everywhere he went on the summer circuit. Bowman was very intrigued by the idea of playing for Georgetown. He knew all about the history of that program, and as a boy, he loved watching the Allen Iverson-led teams in the mid-1990s.

Bowman had planned to visit East Coast relatives with his parents in late August, so he figured that was a good opportunity to take some unofficial visits. He and his father flew into Philadelphia and drove straight to the University of Maryland. Bowman loved the campus and thought the world of Terps head coach Gary Williams, but he also knew Maryland had signed some other recruits who played his position.

He got a much different vibe when he visited Georgetown. He was a city kid who felt at home in Washington, D.C., and he was taken in by the aura of the program. The big moment was when he sat with the legend himself, John Thompson. Thompson was retired by then, but he still maintained a small office in McDonough Gymnasium. Bowman and his father spent about a half-hour with Big John. They were intimidated and awed at the same time. “It was like he gave us this stamp of approval,” Bowman says. “He definitely put his influence on me in a positive way. When I left there, it was a wrap for everyone. I knew where I wanted to go.”

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Bowman marinated on the situation for another couple of weeks and decided he didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. He committed to Georgetown a few days before Cooley and Skinner were supposed to see him. Cooley was disappointed, of course, but such was the nature of recruiting. You lose one player, you move on to the next one. BC had also been hot on the trail of another talented forward, Andre Iguodala, who lived in Springfield, Ill. So Cooley made the switch: instead of traveling to Los Angeles on September 11, he booked himself on a flight to Chicago.

Everything seemed normal that morning until Cooley got to the airport. The traffic there was terrible. Cooley’s wife, Nurys, had been trying to call him, but he didn’t hear the ringing because he was listening to loud music.

When he finally picked up, she told him what was happening on the news. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. There was talk that airports around the country would be closing. Ed dismissed the idea. “Airports don’t close,” he said. He assured her he would be going to Illinois that day and would be home that night.

As the next few hours unfolded, Cooley struggled to digest the day’s events, just as everyone around the country did. Another plane hit the second tower in New York. A third crashed into the Pentagon in Washington. A fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania. Cooley left Logan Airport and drove back to the office, where he and his co-workers sat transfixed in front of the television for the remainder of the day.

At some point — he does not remember exactly when — Cooley settled on a harrowing truth. I was supposed to be on that plane. It was one more disquieting thought on a day that was full of them. He passed along this piece of information to Nurys, but she, too, had a hard time wrapping her head around it. “I don’t know if we really understood the gravity at that instant,” she says. “It was just surreal.”

They didn’t get a chance to discuss it until Cooley got home late that night. He walked through the front door, kissed his two sleeping young children, and then he sat with his wife, cocktails in hand, as they went over the day’s events. Just one day before, they were celebrating his 32nd birthday. Now this. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I could have been left alone and my kids never would have known who their father is,’” Nurys says.

It was hard for them to feel jubilant, knowing how many other families had not been so fortunate. Nurys says she does not like to “go down the rabbit hole of what if,” but sometimes Cooley cannot help himself. “I’ve thought about, could I have done something if I was on the plane? Would I have been intimidated?” he says. “I’m the luckiest man in the world. I really am. That’s why I always try to stay jovial. Whenever people ask me how I’m doing, my answer is always, ‘I’m still here, bro. I guess God don’t want me yet.’”

It’s all so tragically random, isn’t it? We never recognize the small things that lead to bigger things that determine everything that matters. At least, not while they are happening.

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Take John Thompson, for example. What if he had not been in his office on the day of Bowman’s visit? Sure, Bowman would have probably still chosen to go to Georgetown, but might he have waited a little longer to finalize his decision? Might he have met with those BC coaches just see what they had to say?

The gravity of these questions does not have to be explained to Thompson. That’s because he has his own 9/11 story to tell.

In this case, the final destination was supposed to be in Las Vegas. Thompson wanted to be there on September 13 to celebrate the birthday of Mary Fenlon, his longtime academic coordinator at Georgetown, and who still after retirement helped Thompson manage his affairs and media requests. He planned to fly to Las Vegas on the 11th, which would give him a day to rest from the trip and remove the possibility that a travel snafu could cause him to miss the party.

As they were making these plans, Fenlon told Thompson that she had gotten a request for him to appear on Jim Rome’s television show in Los Angeles. They agreed to do the interview on the 11th, with Thompson flying to LA that morning, doing the show and then catching a short flight to Vegas. But Rome’s producer, Danny Schwartz, called a few days before and requested they move the interview back a day, and convinced an initially hesitant Thompson to relent.

On the morning of the 11th, Thompson was sitting in his apartment in Alexandria, Va., watching the horror unfold on television, and felt an odd, distinct vibration. He soon learned that it had come from the impact of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon, less than five miles from where Thompson lived.

A short while later, Fenlon called her boss. “Look at your itinerary,” she said. “You were supposed to be on that flight.” It shook him to the core. “When something like that happens, it’s hard to even think in your mind how close it was. I still have a hard time with it,” he says. “Call it lucky, call it God. I was supposed to be on that plane but I wasn’t.”

Thompson has told this story many times over the years, including on the radio show he co-hosted in Washington. On the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 Rome invited Thompson to tell it on his own show. Rome even brought Schwartz into the conversation. “If you’re ever in Washington, D.C., you look me up,” Thompson quipped. Thompson, too, tries to avoid that frightening rabbit hole, but the reminders are everywhere. “There’s never a time when I pass the Pentagon and I don’t look over there and conceptualize how the plane came in,” he says.

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As for Bowman, Thompson does not recall meeting him and his father on their unofficial visit, though he does not doubt that it happened. He does, however, remember Bowman as a talented prospect with an affable demeanor. “He was a very fine player. He played the forward position but he could handle and shoot a little bit,” Thompson says. “I remember he was very pleasant. I liked him.”

Thompson had never heard Cooley’s 9/11 story, so he never realized the full impact of his visit with Bowman. It was just one small thing that led to bigger things that made all the difference to Cooley and his family. “It’s got to be an act of God because Cooley is one of my favorites in coaching,” Thompson says. “All that connecting makes me feel even better because I like him. Tell him he owes me.”

Bowman will turn 34 next month, but he feels like he’s 25. And he still loves to play basketball, which is why he has spent the last 12 years chasing the game all over the world. He met his wife in Israel, where he spent the last three seasons. They are expecting their first child, a boy, next month. “If I name all the countries where I’ve played we’ll be here all night,” he says. “Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Korea, China, New Zealand, Serbia, Israel, Cyprus, Belgium.” Pause. “And America a little.”

Alas, Bowman, who started all four years at Georgetown and twice averaged more than 15 points a game, never quite made the NBA. The closest he came was in 2009, when he was invited to try out for the Philadelphia 76ers. He thought he had played well enough to make the team, but he was cut on the very last day of camp, partly because the team wanted to save a spot in case Iverson wanted to return – which he did a month later. “It was horrible,” Bowman says. “I was one day away.”

One day away. That phrase takes on greater meaning today, the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. For Cooley, this day, coming as it always does the day after his birthday, serves as his annual reminder of the tragic randomness of life. One day you’re marking the day you were born, and the next you’re marking the day you almost died. “I’ll do what I do every time the anniversary comes around,” he says. “I’ll get up in the morning. I’ll look outside. I’ll say a prayer for all those families that have been affected. And I’ll thank God that he saved me.”

In 2006, Cooley got his first head coaching job at Fairfield University. Five years later, he came home to be the head coach at Providence, where he currently earns around $2 million per year. Bowman has followed Cooley’s career over the years and admires the way his teams at Providence play, but they have not stayed in touch. Until I called Bowman last week for this story, he never knew the pivotal role he played in Cooley’s 9/11 story. “Wow. For real? I had no idea,” he says. “I’m kind of like a guardian angel I guess. It always works like that, huh? Something weird happens, and it’s like a chain of events.”

Cooley and his wife don’t dwell on the close call they experienced 17 years ago, but there is no doubt it had a profound impact. “We were early in our marriage and we hadn’t really planned properly for a tragedy. We didn’t even have life insurance,” Nurys says. “Neither one of us grew up thinking too much about the future. Now he’s always thinking about it. What if this happens, what if that happens. It’s stressful because I’m constantly bringing him back to, okay, we’ll plan, but let’s think about right now. Let’s be present right now.”

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Several years ago, Cooley read the book Flight 93 about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. “Just to feel connected,” he says. The experience also exacerbated his fear of flying, which is a major challenge considering how frequently his job requires him to travel. “When I get on a plane, I look at everybody who gets on it sideways,” he says. “I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just nervous. It’s the unknown of being on a big machine floating in the air. When you’re a coach or a leader, you want to feel like you’re in control.”

Cooley is the gregarious sort, to say the least, but as he recounts his 9/11 story, he has to pause several times to compose himself. “This is a tough conversation, brother. Really hard,” he says. Today’s anniversary will exhume many emotions he has tried to bury, but it will also remind Cooley how the episode fortified his faith and bolstered his optimism. No matter how many games he loses or recruits who spurn him, Cooley is always in a good mood when he walks into a gym. What’s not to be happy about? He’s still here, isn’t he?

(Top photo: Patrick Gorski/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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