A Coach To Watch?

I meant to comment on this one last week:



As the story says, Temple's college basketball team recently upset #3 ranked Villanova.

So why is this blogworthy?

Well, Temple is now coached by Fran Dunphy, a man whom I watched coach my alma mater, UPenn, for years. As far as I could tell, Dunphy was a coaching genius. I continually marveled at what he did there, competition-wise, with some real scrubs. (Though he did have a couple guys get some run in the NBA in Jerome Allen and Matt Maloney).

But the rest of Penn's rosters were constituted of nobodies - nobodies who for years played over their heads. In my calculus, it just had to be the coach.

Three years ago, Fran Dunphy left Penn for cross-town (sports) rival Temple - a school not hampered with *Ivy League academic standards*. Obviously, Dunphy was going to get a chance to work with a significantly deeper talent pool. At the time I predicted he'd flourish.

One game certainly does not a career make, no less a season. But I'll be keeping a occasional eye on Fran's Temple Owls, their record anyway; and won't be the least surprised if he makes a real name for himself there.

Penn has a somewhat of a storied coaching history. NBA coaches Dick Harter and Chuck Daly both did stints there, at the Palestra.



One of Dunphy's *scrubs* was a light-skinned, cocky-a$$, pogo-stick by the name of Donald Moxley.

The guy ended up a starter, albeit only late in his career, and even hit a game-winning shot in a Big Five game at the Spectrum if memory serves me.

Nevertheless, even more prominently, he starred in the capstone of MY basketball playing career. Let's just say that the gap between his self-image and his ability was cavernous. And these types, LONG before my first blog post, were always in my sights!

So during one pickup game, he flew through the lane right past two tall trees,...did some dipsy-doodle, double-clutch....I came out of nowhere and rejected his weak poop not only off the entire court, but I sent it so far down a long hallway that we had to send an Asian kid down to fetch the ball!!! Everyone was ooohing and ahhhing. Quietly he muttered something about it being a *good block*.

Luckily one of my buddies was there and witnessed me schooling one of Dunphy's guys....otherwise there'd be NO WAY any of the scoffers would have believed me.

See also - Obsessions Of Yore.