Nearly twenty-five years ago when Temple’s president Peter Liacouras was looking for a coach to turn his school’s middling basketball program back into a big-time, perennial powerhouse, he decided to hire an up-and-coming, 50-year-old man to restore the glory. A “best-kept-secret,” John Chaney was not exactly a household name beyond the insular world of Division II basketball, specifically, the small school PSAC, where Chaney guided little Cheyney State into one of those teams that just scared the living daylights out of people.
In fact, they still talk about Chaney, who was much more unbridled than during the later years at Temple, putting on shows on the sidelines while his teams took care of business at places like Millersville, Kutztown and Shippensburg. Certainly, no one back then thought Chaney was heading for the Hall of Fame. Count him in that bunch, too, since he has always maintained that he would have never left Cheyney had they offered him tenure.
But they didn’t and we all know how his story turned out.
So 25 years after Temple took a chance on 50-year old Wild John from Cheyney State, Temple announced that it will take a chance on a 56-year-old basketball lifer. This time, though, the choice to take Temple back to its basketball glory days is Fran Dunphy, who has spent the past decade-and-a-half nearby at Penn. It was there that Dunphy won title after title in the Ivy League in very much the same way Chaney did in the PSAC.
Obviously, there is a quite a difference between the Ivy League and the state schools of Pennsylvania. And certainly Dunphy is not quite the “unknown” that Chaney was when he arrived at Temple despite being tabbed with such a label.
“He’s one of America’s best-kept secrets,” Chaney said.
That in itself is quite a feat. Dunphy had taken Penn to 10 NCAA Tournaments, and compiled over 300 victories all without offering a single scholarship to any of his players. In the history of the city’s Big 5, Dunphy is one of just six coaches to win more than 300 games at the same school. Yet with four starters returning from last season’s team that cruised to the Ivy League championship before losing to Texas in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament, Dunphy could have very easily relaxed for the rest of his career, earning tournament bid after tournament bid while cultivating his legendary status at 33rd and Walnut.
But there is something kind of boring about that for Dunphy. Having spent his entire life with basketball programs that were almost big time, but not quite as an undergrad and assistant at La Salle before taking over at Penn, Dunphy, deep down, knows he will never get to the Final Four with the Quakers.
Yes, of course there are many challenges remaining at Penn for Dunphy. After all, it’s hard work to get to the top and stay there year after year. But if George Mason can go to a Final Four with Jim Larranaga as the coach, why can’t Dunphy do it?
Then again, Chaney never got to the Final Four at Temple, one of the winningest basketball programs in the country, though he came awfully close five times. Plus, recruiting kids to play for Temple is a lot different than at Penn. That’s not a knock on either school, it’s just the way it is.
So with his dreams and wanderlust, Dunphy will dig in on North Broad Street where his teams will play in a fancy new building complete with all of the modern amenities that coddled college basketball studs expect. Those things come with bigger expectations and more pressure, but it seems as if the unflappable Dunphy, seemingly rejuvenated by the switch, can handle it just fine.
He just seems like the man Temple was looking for.
“It’s as I once said, you want to stay your course,” Chaney said. “That means when you have made a decision on who you want to come into our high-profile program, you want to be sure you’re bringing in a great person.”