As Philly Hoops Royalty, Temple Coach Fran Dunphy Wants to Conquer March

This feature is part of VICE Sports' March Madness coverage.

It would be hard to make a timeline of Philadelphia basketball that didn't feature Temple coach Fran Dunphy in a prominent role. In what is arguably America's most college basketball-saturated city, Dunphy has left his imprint everywhere.

Dunphy attended Philly schools from the start: first St. Dorothy's in Drexel Hill, and then Malvern Prep. In college, he played for Tom Gola—think the Chris Mullin of Philly, if Mullin can figure out how to make St. John's into a power again—and a La Salle team that went 23-1 in 1968-69 and finished the season ranked second behind UCLA. That LaSalle team was denied a chance at a postseason run thanks to the NCAA's longstanding tendency to punish coaches and players for infractions committed by others.

That was the end of Dunphy's playing career, but in the more than four decades that followed, he has packed several careers' worth of accomplishments on his resumé. He assisted Gary Williams at American University, then Speedy Morris at La Salle, where he helped to recruit Lionel Simmons, the best La Salle player since Gola. After that, Dunphy worked with Tom Schneider at Penn.

When Dunphy succeeded Schneider at Penn, in 1989, he put together a body of work that eventually placed him second to Pete Carril in all-time Ivy League victories, with 10 Ivy League titles and 310 wins as head coach of the Quakers. In 2006, at a time when most coaches would be content to sit back in a job-for-life and wait to see their name on an arena, Dunphy decided to succeed the legendary and legendarily un-succeedable John Chaney at Temple.

This year marks Dunphy's seventh NCAA tournament in ten seasons on the job. Chaney made five trips to the Elite Eight during his long tenure with the Owls, but it's also worth remembering that Chaney missed the NCAAs in his final five seasons. Dunphy had some work to do to restore the program when he took over, and he did it, though he has always been quick to credit Chaney for the ease of his transition. To overhaul a prototypical Philly program, it took a prototypical Philly basketball lifer.

"I ran the gamut from being a young boy going to games at the Palestra, to being able to play at the Palestra, to coaching at the Palestra, to being the part of 27 years coaching in Philadelphia," Dunphy, who is 67, said. "I don't think too many people are luckier than that."

"I've known Fran Dunphy for a very long time," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said Thursday. Of course he had: McCaffery is a fellow Philly product and a former Penn star himself. "I played against teams that he coached in high school. He coached at my alma mater. You look at his record, he's averaged, I think, 21 wins for a very long period of time. It's really hard to do, and he's been able to do it in the city that he loves, where he grew up and where he lives. His teams consistently perform a certain way. They don't beat themselves. They take care of the basketball. They rebound the basketball. They move the ball. They share the ball. All the things that, as a coach, you want your team to do. So it's really not a surprise that they consistently win wherever he's coaching."

About that city he loves: Dunphy's tenure at Penn included three Philadelphia Big Five City Series titles. The Big Five—Penn, Villanova, Temple, La Salle, and St. Joseph's—is the rivalry that connects Philadelphia college basketball, and the city itself to its basketball talent pipeline. So it is entirely appropriate that as Dunphy attempts to add the one thing missing from his basketball tenure—a trip to the second weekend at the NCAA tournament—he is surrounded in Brooklyn by reminders of all that he's accomplished.

Dunphy will face McCaffery on Friday afternoon, and should his Owls beat the Hawkeyes, it is almost certain that Villanova that will stand between Dunphy and his first trip to the Sweet 16. To get where he has not yet been with Temple, Dunphy is going to have to conquer Philadelphia, again.

"We haven't been wearing white shirts too many of those years, but that's the way life goes," Dunphy said Thursday. "Would I like to have more wins as a basketball coach in the NCAA? Sure. When I used to walk my dog, I would think about it all the time. I'd like to reverse the number, but that's not what life has presented to me. But I do think that we've done a good job, whatever our staff has been, of putting the kids in the right situation to try to graduate, to play the best basketball we can. I'm proud of what we have accomplished."

That lens may be the best way to understand what drives Dunphy. He's famously reluctant to discuss his own success and motivations, and quick to credit others. He described both his decision to turn down the La Salle job in 2004 and then to make his move to Temple in 2006 as a "gut feeling" to reporters at the time.

"I don't think it's any different than what I said to the other guy," Dunphy explained in the main lobby of Barclays Center Thursday afternoon. "It was time. If it had been somewhere outside of Philadelphia or far away from home, I don't know if I would have made it. But it just felt like it was time to find out a little more about myself. And I don't know if that's anything more than getting older, and getting wiser. I think that the missions of both institutions are totally different. And I think I needed Temple's mission to be feeling more complete."

That answer gets to the center of what separates Temple from Penn: an ability to give scholarships, and thus to reward players who might not otherwise be able to get a college education. For all the many things that the NCAA and its system do not provide for players, it's easy to lose sight of the good that can be done by coaches like Dunphy—or Chaney, who also went out of his way to recruit disadvantaged kids—who take seriously the student-athlete ideal.

Dunphy lectured at Penn, and he's taught a class at Temple's business school for nearly a decade. (To complete the Philly basketball experience, Dunphy earned his Master's in counseling and human relations from Villanova.) He graduates his players at an elite rate compared to the rest of the country and even to previous Temple basketball teams.

"Things that I'm proud of, other than basketball, are that I have an opportunity to help teach a class at Temple," Dunphy said. "I'm proud of the fact that I'm on a number of different boards of nonprofits [where] you can lend your name, your expertise toward helping somebody else. I think that's what life is about."

Of his public promise (fulfilled) to shave his signature mustache if former Temple star Dionte Christmas got his degree at Temple, Dunphy said, "I did, and that was fun. And that's what you want, is for these kids to graduate and start to become men."

What seems to bring Dunphy back, year after year, is an effort to recreate, if not find completion for, that abbreviated season at La Salle way back in 1969. "I think of something Fred Shero, the former Flyers coach said: 'Win today, we'll be together for ever,'" Dunphy said. "We never mouthed those words, but we've been together forever. Our guys stayed together, we stayed the best of friends. I think, always, that's the charge that you have. To bring your guys together so that they love one another."

It's not the goal that most college basketball coaches talk about, but Dunphy's record speaks to his commitment to it. And in Philadelphia, of all places, no one has anything negative to say about him.

"What amazes me about Fran is that, when he was at LaSalle, LaSalle basketball was at the top of Philly," Villanova coach Jay Wright said Thursday. "When he went to Penn, he had Penn basketball at the top of Philly and nationally a great program. And then he went to Temple, and he's got that Temple program right back nationally, NCAA tournament. He's a guy that's a winner, and he gets it, and most importantly, he's respected by everybody. You don't see that many people that are successful and respected by everyone, and it's a rare combination."

In a city whose basketball culture runs on respect, it's hard to imagine anything more valuable than the capital Dunphy has. Philadelphia players on his current team like DeVontae Watson, Jaylen Bond, and Devin Coleman who will someday trace their careers back to Dunphy like Dunphy can to Gola.

"Endgame? No. Never think about it," Dunphy said on Thursday. The very idea that the season ever stops seemed to catch him by surprise. "Just now, we think about Iowa, trying to beat them. And then, whenever the offseason starts for us, I'll think about getting our present group together—let's work out a little bit." Dunphy's body started moving as he talked, as if he could will the future into the present through sheer enthusiasm.

Whatever happens on Friday, Dunphy has already accomplished quite a bit at Temple: he's already won coach of the year honors in both the Atlantic 10 and the American Athletic Conference. But the work is the thing. "Let's see what we have in store for next year," Dunphy continued, eagerly. "Then we'll have three new kids coming as freshmen—let's get them started. Summer school stuff. Let's go."