Tough cookie
DENVER – Whenever Penn played Temple, you could count on Fran Dunphy's mother being there, and on top of that, you could count on a batch of her cookies – oatmeal, light sugar.
Dunphy loved those cookies. Problem was, they weren't for him.
"They were for John Chaney," Dunphy said. "She loved him. I would always joke with her that I was her second-favorite basketball coach."
Now he has her favorite basketball coach's old job. And thanks to a late charge in his second season as Chaney's replacement, Dunphy has Temple basketball in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2001.
That trip ended with a South Regional final loss to Michigan State, a fifth, painful defeat for Chaney on the doorstep of a Final Four he never reached. On Thursday, the Owls will try to pull off an upset of the Spartans in this South Regional's 5-12 matchup, a goal that doesn't seem so far-fetched considering how the Owls are playing of late.
Chaney will be watching by himself as usual, "so nobody will hear me commenting on it," he said Wednesday from his Philadelphia home. He tends to get a tad emotional. Most of these players were recruited to Temple by him. Fran Dunphy is a close friend, and not just because of Josephine Dunphy's baking skills.
It's been that way for years. You think of Philadelphia basketball and you think of the Big 5 – Temple, Saint Joseph's, Villanova, Penn, LaSalle. You think of the Palestra, and you think of John Chaney. You should think of Dunphy, too. He was star on the 1969 LaSalle team that went 23-1 and is regarded by many as the best Big 5 team in history. Before that, the Philly native was a kid hanging around the Palestra, going as often as he could to the doubleheaders they used to have on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
"If you were lucky enough to be in attendance," Dunphy said, "it really felt like you were in a cathedral."
He got into the coaching game, had assistant stops at Army, LaSalle, American, LaSalle again, then finally to Penn for one year. He took over in 1989 and immediately pushed Penn to the top of the Ivy League, an annual tussle with Princeton. Ten league titles, nine NCAA tournament bids, 310 wins in 17 seasons – and a close relationship with all the coaches, including Chaney.
"We try to knock each other's heads off," Dunphy said of the other Big 5 coaches, "but we have true friendships."
There's a certain sense of responsibility here. People talk about "coaching fraternities," but this is more like a secret society devoted to upholding Philadelphia basketball. There really is no place like this, with so many quality programs in a concentrated area, all of which play each other, and with fans who have their own preferences but who ultimately root for all the Big 5 to take care of outsiders.
"It's a great basketball town. Someone set this up for us a long time ago," Dunphy said. "We're just the present caretakers."
In the late 1990s, Chaney and Temple visited St. Bonaventure, always a tough place to play. A story had recently come out about Chaney's impoverished youth and how he used to scrape up pennies to buy bags of crushed cookies from a local bakery. The St. Bonaventure students threw cookies and change at the Temple bench all night. A tradition was started.
"They'd throw cookies at me all the time," Chaney said. "I'd yell, 'I don't want you to throw chocolate chip cookies! Throw oatmeal! I'm a type 2 diabetic, I can't have all that sugar!' "
Josephine Dunphy caught wind of the story and brought Chaney a box of fresh oatmeal cookies the next time Penn and Temple played, and every time after that.
"Very low sugar," Chaney said. "You could really taste the oatmeal. What a wonderful woman."
When Chaney retired, he gave Temple three names as possible replacements: former assistant Dan Leibovitz, who is Hartford's head coach; former assistant Dean Demopoulos, now with the Portland Trail Blazers; and former player Rick Brunson, a Virginia assistant.
But four days after he cleaned out his office, Dunphy called. They set up a meeting at an out-of-the-way place called Colleen's Restaurant. Chaney, Dunphy and the restaurant owner were the only ones in the building.
Dunphy was interested in the job, but only if Chaney was interested in him.
"Without his blessing, I wouldn't have thought about it," Dunphy said. "He gave me that stamp of approval. I didn't even want it to get to an interview stage without that."
"I said, 'Boy, I'm shocked,' " recalled Chaney, who had tried to convince Ohio State to hire Dunphy in 2004 after Jim O'Brien was fired. "I was shocked he'd leave Penn with such a great reputation. He's one of the best coaches in the country. He's one of the best things that ever happened to anybody – and he's virtually overlooked!
"I said, 'Are you out of your mind? I had no idea you'd be interested. Of course I'll endorse you.' I love this guy, he's something special. You don't find a guy like this, with the fibers he has in him, at any program in the country."
Chaney's ex-players would agree. The transition has been smooth, they say, and the term "great human being" was used over and over again here Wednesday.
"He taught me a lot, man, just as far as being a better human being," the Owls' leading scorer, Dionte Christmas, said of Dunphy.
Temple won seven straight to get here, edging St. Joseph's in the Atlantic 10 tourney final. The Owls have adapted quickly to Dunphy's changes – man-to-man defense in place of Chaney's matchup zone; an offense that is more up-tempo, more egalitarian in its design.
"Me, I'd usually have a couple top players, and I wanted to make sure my better players ended up with more shots," Chaney said. "His guys have a license to shoot the basketball, I guess. A lot of them can shoot. I had to have more restrictions."
Dunphy admitted he felt trepidation about this move because "we're advised in this world never to follow a legend," he said. On top of that, it's not advisable to leave a place where you already are a legend.
But big things are happening already for Dunphy and Temple. And if the Owls can get past Michigan State, then Pittsburgh or Oral Roberts on Saturday, Chaney and Josephine Dunphy might just be sitting together next weekend in Houston – watching a coach who is No. 2 on Josephine's list of favorites, No. 1 on Chaney's.
"I know if they win and move on (to next weekend), I'll be there and she'll be there," Chaney said. "And I know she'll bring me those cookies."
Joe Rexrode covers Michigan State for the Lansing (MI) State Journal.
