Providence coach Ed Cooley said it was “very, very hard” to turn down Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel for the basketball head coaching job.

Talking to Stadium’s Jeff Goodman on Goodman’s “Good ’N Plenty” podcast, Goodman talked about Michigan’s pursuit of Cooley, calling it a “hard, hard push.”

“Through my whole tenure at Providence, there really wasn’t a school that got me to at least consider [leaving],” Cooley said. “You know, there’s been some great opportunities that have been presented, but my whole thing is fit and and you know, not comfort, it’s fit. And I think so many people don’t look into fit and how they can have success knowing what they know how they know it.

But this Michigan opportunity, I had to listen to them. You know it wasn’t so much that you wanted to do it, I needed an opportunity to sit and talk with Warde, let’s face it, it’s one of the best athletic brands in all of college sports. So that’s how it came about.”

Cooley went on to say he knew Manuel from his time as athletic director at UConn, at the time a Big East rival for Providence.

“What a lovely person he is, Warde,” Cooley said. “Good dude, very jovial, very direct, extremely articulate.”

Goodman then asked Cooley how close he came to taking the Michigan job.

“Well, Warde made it really hard. Very, very hard,” Cooley said. “And there are some changes being made at Providence College, good changes, tough changes, what we’ve seen with the school and how it’s really grown. But Warde and Doug, his assistant, did a really good job pointing out the positives, pointing out where they’re trying to go. Obviously the Big Ten is a very good league, the coaches are very good coaches … But it was very, very difficult and at the end of the day, you come back to this: John Beilein, to me is one of the best coaches in all of sports in how he’s been successful at every stop he’s been at.

“End of the day, fit was everything to me,” Cooley said. “Not so much being home, but leaving home and the locker room of the players that we’ve recruited, the kids that came to Providence College because of the way they were recruited, and I just didn’t think now was that time.”

Cooley also added that he felt that Providence was “one of the best jobs in the country.”

Michigan concluded its coaching search by hiring Miami Heat assistant Juwan Howard, who had been one of the favorites for the job from the second it became an opening. Howard starred for the Wolverines as one of the members of the Fab Five, had a long and successful NBA career as a player, and spent six years as a Heat assistant under Erik Spoelstra.