Ed Cooley is a little better coach than PatrickTwo. He proceeded to go 6-25 and 7-25 in those subsequent two years.
His team actually was 7-9 in conference play in the year they won the Big East tournament to get the automatic bid in the NCAA tournament. That was the year after the NCAA tournament was cancelled but COVID was still going strong and many teams played a reduced schedule.
His 2-18 conference year was his last season there. That was better than his 0-19 conference season the year before. His successor's first conference season produced the same result as Ewing's final conference season: 2-18. He's doing significantly better this year.