Looking good on North Broad

Got up to ol’ Temple University on Wednesday night for the first time in forever, and boy has the place changed. Back in the old days I used to hang around the place quite a bit, but it just wore me out. That'll happen.

It's because they don’t suffer fools up at Temple. They can’t. Life is too short and there are things to do. If you can't hang it's probably best to move on.

There’s no time to mess around.

Nevertheless, when one gets to Temple these days it looks as if someone took a fancy snow globe and dropped it in the middle of North Broad Street. Yeah, those red flags with that big “T” are still there, but so too are a whole bunch of new buildings, new chain-type places and tidier surroundings.

You know… gentrification.

Yet for those who haven’t seen the basketball team play since John Chaney left after the 2006 season, the Temple Owls are a bit different now, too. Fran Dunphy is in charge now and that tangled web of a defense called the match-up zone has been packed away and put in a closet somewhere in McGonigle Hall. They have pushed all of the relics aside at Temple. Sure, they remember the good old days, but they pretty much just live in the now.

And why not? Dunphy’s team is off to a 16-3 start to the season, which is the best a Temple club has performed since Eddie Jones, Aaron McKie and Rick Brunson staked Chaney to a 16-3 start during the 1993-94 season. That was the year where the Owls climbed as high as No. 4 in the polls, but drew a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament only to get shot down by Indiana at the Cap Centre.

Those Owls from the ’94 tournament were better than just a second-round exit and it would take until the upset by Seton Hall in the second round in the 2000 big dance for them to have a more disappointing end to a season.

There won’t be that level of disappointment for Temple in the tournament in 2010. Oh sure, Dunphy’s team is all alone atop the standings in the Atlantic 10 with a perfect 4-0 record after holding off Xavier on Wednesday night, but after being pegged as the fifth-best team in the conference (behind La Salle) it seems as if most folks are jumping on the bandwagon and just going for a ride.

Who cares where it winds up?

These Owls are (wait for it…) a hoot. Remember the sluggish way in which Chaney’s teams played offense? Remember how dependent they were on a strong point guard to impose the coach’s iron grip to choke out any creativity? Yeah, well they packed all that away, too. These Owls were not afraid to mix it up with Xavier in a fullcourt slugfest. Why not? Entering the game with a defense that held opponents to the third-worst shooting percentage in the country, the Owls must figure that sooner or later the odds are going to fall in their favor. How else could one explain away the fact that Temple shot 58 percent against Xavier on Wednesday, yet needed six foul shots from senior Ryan Brooks in the final 22 seconds in order to salt it away.

It didn’t hurt that Juan Fernandez, an Argentinean like Pepe Sanchez only with a legit jumper, buried a rushed 15-footer with 43 seconds to go in the game to keep Xavier off by two possessions.

Remember how Chaney used to ride his five starters until he squeezed every ounce of effort out of them? Yeah, well try this out — seven Owls scored in the first half against Xavier even though four guys played at least 37 minutes.

“When you have a team as talented as them with guys who play a lot of minutes, it’s difficult,” Xavier’s coach Chris Mack said. “Because they play all those minutes together they have an incredible chemistry. It’s tough because they spread your defense out.”

Brooks and Fernandez are the focal points of the offense, but big man Lavoy Allen can take it outside and bury a three. In fact, five different players took a three-point shot for Temple, including a 2-for-3 effort from 6-foot-9 reserve, Craig Williams.

“If they shoot the ball like that, they’re going to be a tough out, no matter who they play,” Mack said.

That is something that has never changed with Temple — they are always a tough out. When they announce those pairings in the NCAA Tournament selection show, no one wants to see their team lined up against the Owls. It’s no fun playing those guys.

It’s a lot of fun watching them, however, but not that one would notice from the crowd at the Liacouras Center. Oh sure, the student section behind the far end hoop was as raucous and rowdy as ever while cheering on their Owls with an array of clever tunes and chants, but there was a lot of empty space on the second deck in the building.

Certainly those Temple students can find a couple of hours away from their studies to watch an exciting basketball team, can’t they? Then again, there were always a few empty seats over at 3,900-seat McGonigle Hall when Temple had Mark Macon, Eddie Jones and Aaron McKie.

“To be honest, I was hoping [the fans] would be there last Saturday against UMass, as well,” Dunphy said, almost forlornly. “Our students are coming back from break, but a lot of them are coming from 25 miles away. It’s not like they’re coming from great distances and they can’t get to a game. It’s really important for our students to be here. We need as much support as we can get. We need our students, our alums and great Temple fans — we need to get as many people in here that we can and hopefully really support this basketball team.”

Better yet, with Villanova and Temple back to carrying the mantle for the Big 5, it’s kind of hard to stay away. Go check it out for yourself… it ain’t the same Temple anymore.

Dunphy replaces a legend at Temple

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.”