Providence’s victory over Georgetown was the perfect cap to its Ed Cooley split.

The Friars’ 84-76 win over their former coach produced an incredible atmosphere at Amica Mutual Pavilion.

Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” is one of several game-day staples at Providence’s Amica Mutual Pavilion. It may not be as iconic as “Everytime We Touch” for Duke or “Jump Around” for Wisconsin football, but Providence students have been yelling out the words to a Swift favorite during late-game media timeouts for several years.

But when the song played on Saturday before the Friars’ highly anticipated game against Georgetown—the first since longtime coach Ed Cooley left Providence for Washington, D.C.—it was difficult not to detect a sense of new meaning in the words.

You could poll 10 Providence fans on why they were most upset about Cooley’s sudden departure for a Big East rival last spring. Some will allege he checked out late last season with his mind on a move to the Hoyas. Others will point to Cooley, a Providence native, often calling Providence his dream job throughout his tenure. Other unsubstantiated claims have spread like wildfire throughout the internet in the last 10 months. The final product: Cooley essentially being named Public Enemy No. 1 in Rhode Island.

Whatever theory you subscribe to, at the heart of it all is the natural emotion that most college sports fans have experienced at least once in their cheering careers: the belief that the place in which they put endless hours of energy, and frequently a lot of money, is insufficient. Cooley has made much of his desire to help Georgetown contend for national championships again and attract the top players in the country. Cooley today described his leaving as a personal and business decision, and he believes Providence can contend for championships, but a Friar fan could easily perceive his decision to leave as a statement to the contrary.

“Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that what you’re looking for has been here the whole time,” is a classic line from Swift’s 2008 hit. Sound familiar? Providence fans may be happy now to have moved on from Cooley, but there’s a certain “little brother” dynamic at play here. It’s the chip on the shoulder of a program, city and state that truly believes it can compete amongst college basketball’s elite, yet still lost its coach to a program that had gone 2–37 in Big East games the last two years. And that, at its core, felt like the root of every expletive hurled at Cooley Saturday.