PSD Photos: Kathy Leister

Special thanks to Penn Athletics, Temple Athletics, Colgate Athletics and Auburn Athletics for additional photo contributions

By: Rich Flanagan

PHILADELPHIA – Paul Chambers remembers what the University of Pennsylvania basketball program was like when arriving on campus in 1988.

Chambers went to Penn to play football and decided during his freshman year that he would walk on to the basketball team under head coach Tom Schneider. One of Schneider’s assistant coaches was a man named Fran Dunphy, who was in his first year with the Quakers. At that time, Schneider would travel alone for recruiting trips, leaving the assistants to oversee practices at certain points in the season. Chambers, who starred at Episcopal Academy under the late Dan Dougherty – the same man who coached Dunphy at Malvern Prep – was used to how Schneider ran practice but when Dunphy took control during those recruiting trips, a coaching style and pedigree that would define Big 5 basketball for four decades was witnessed at the Palestra for the very first time.

“When Dunph was running practice, we were getting after it,” Chambers said. “We were not surprised when he got the head coaching job because we knew he was the type of guy who get it back to a winning tradition.”

It has defined him and all those who have had the privilege of learning under him and ultimately made him a fixture in Philadelphia basketball for almost a half century.

“He always had the big picture in mind,” Chambers said. “He was competitive as hell, but he also wanted you to learn life lessons. He thought sports were the best way to get young men prepared for real life. He would always talk about that. It was a big part of how he coached and sports, specifically basketball, with the camaraderie, the team aspect, the obstacles and hardships are very similar to life. He would always tell me, ‘It’s such a privilege to be playing sports, especially in college. You’re going to miss this and you’re not going to realize how fast this goes by.’”

“For all of us that go through that life experience when you’re young and think you know everything, you’re tremendously insecure and don’t know anything,” Dunphy said. “Then each year you get a little bit better and start to share responsibilities with staff, then years after that you start sharing responsibilities with these kids who are on the court doing the work. You get older and more mature, and you’re more secure in who you are.”

After Chambers graduated in 1992, Dunphy’s ideology began to materialize as he won the first of his 10 Ivy League championships, which is second-most all-time in league history. Dunphy put together a torrid run from 1992-96 as Penn won 48 consecutive Ivy League games and four titles in that span. The 1993-94 team was ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 and beat Nebraska, which featured future NBA players Eric Piatkowski, Erick Strickland and Mikki Moore, in the NCAA Tournament, securing Dunphy’s first tournament win.

“The lesson I take from that is what he does with Coaches vs. Cancer. His whole thing is if I can do anything to make the quality of life for a person better for one day, that’s better than anything we can do on the court. As coaches, we all get caught up in chasing championships and titles, but I think if you look at his record, he would look at how much he’s raised for Coaches vs. Cancer compared to any championship in all his coaching years.”

It’s why Bowman sought out a well-known professor on campus and began preparing himself for the next phase of life.

“As the game has changed so much in terms of being analytically driven, he had me work for Professor Keith Weigelt in the Wharton Business School who had me in an internship that focused on the analytics of basketball and applying it,” Bowman said. “That was my job and Keith talked about where the three-point shot was going to take the game and to think about where we’re at now. It showed that Coach Dunphy was so ahead of the time. He was always nostalgic and a historian but also looking to see where the game was going.”

Bowman is also one of the handful of Dunphy disciples to go into coaching joining Dave Klatsky (NYU), Matt Langel (Colgate), Aaron McKie, Gil Jackson, Dwayne Killings and Steve Donahue, who defeated his mentor while at Cornell in the first round of the 2010 NCAA Tournament en route to a Sweet Sixteen berth.

Dunphy was a staple in Philadelphia basketball during Langel’s time as a player and has been since. While he regularly traveled all over with Langel for recruiting trips, he could regularly be found courtside at a local high school game like he was for Marple Newtown and Neumann-Goretti at St. Joe’s Prep in the PIAA Class 5A Tournament opener the night before his final game in Philadelphia. It’s the latest example, or as Langel notes, story that someone out there has with Dunphy who will continue to be a mainstay at high school basketball games in his city.

“In Philadelphia with the college landscape and the Catholic League, Public League, Inter-Ac and suburban leagues, it’s really unique for people who aren’t from Philadelphia to understand what the basketball community is,” Langel said. “From a CYO breakfast to a funeral service to the media guys playing noon hoops at the Palestra to the Sonny Hill League, everybody has a Coach Dunphy story.”

“After touring the campus and getting to meet with Coach Dunphy, he didn’t guarantee me anything,” Romanczuk said. “He said, ‘We guarantee you an opportunity to come here and work hard and earn your minutes. Here’s what we think can work out for you, but you need to put in the work and earn minutes.’ I liked that because he was being real and honest with me. He could back it up with the tradition that he was building. That’s something I wanted to be a part of.”

He avg. 11.2 ppg for the 1999 Ivy League champions and finished his career with 1,179 points and 602 career rebounds. Romanczuk emphasized that Dunphy “has been the face of the Big 5” and the reason he’s been the face is the familial bond he’s built with his players, coaches and the Philadelphia basketball community.

“Every single game his mother and father were right behind. His sisters and brother were there along with nieces and nephews. There was a large Dunphy contingent following us around whether it was a Big 5 game or a game somewhere else. He made our team into a family. I remember early on he said, you don’t need to rush fraternities because this is your family. He made it feel like that from day one.”

“He was an example that, as important as we thought basketball was, it was still just a game and a small part of our being. He wanted us to be good people and to care for and serve others. He was an example of that.”

“Philly basketball will not have the same feel without him on a sideline or playing in games,” Zoller said. “He’s been part of Philadelphia basketball for over 50 years, and it will definitely have a different feel to it with all that he’s done for basketball.”

Dunphy’s arrival at Temple both ushered in a revival and recommenced a tradition of winning that began with Chaney, who won 516 games and led the Owls to five Elite Eight appearances. Luis Guzman was Chaney’s final recruit at Temple and chose to remain with the program after Dunphy was hired. According to Guzman, “I felt like the program had been beaten up at the end of Coach Chaney’s tenure and the city didn’t believe.” That was due to Temple missing the NCAA Tournament for five straight seasons to close out Chaney’s career. When Dunphy came in, there was a drastic shift in basketball philosophy (Chaney’s 2-3 matchup zone to Dunphy’s straight man-to-man defense) and program outlook.

Dunphy was instilling in players like Guzman and Brooks, who was Dunphy’s first recruit at Temple. Brooks scored 1,319 points at Lower Merion and led the Aces to the 2006 PIAA Class 4A title (largest classification at the time. Having been from the area, Brooks knew about Dunphy and his coaching style and was excited about the prospect of playing for someone who would push him to perform on the court and in the classroom.

“I had already had some familiarity with Fran and what he had established in his career at Penn,” Brooks said. “Being engulfed in Philadelphia basketball culture, you already know and had heard things about how he conducted himself and how much he got out of his players. That was the environment that I was raised in at Lower Merion as you’re always an extension of the program on and off the court. When given the opportunity to be Dunphy’s first recruit at Temple, the foundation had already been in place and now it was focused on what our goals were long-term and planning to get out both academically and athletically.”

Guzman and Brooks helped lead the Owls to the 2008 NCAA Tournament with the likes of Dionte Christmas, Lavoy Allen, Tyndale, Chris Clark and Sergio Olmos. So many things came together so quickly for that group and Guzman recalls “to this day, I hear him saying, ‘The way you do anything is the way you do everything.’ Always be early. Treat everyone with respect. Love and help people as much as you can. When things go wrong, stick with it and be disciplined enough to succeed. He impacted my life in so many ways on and off the court.”

Dunphy led the Owls to eight NCAA Tournament berths and, while the winning brought increased expectations, it also pushed the head coach to push his players to prepare themselves for life after basketball, most notably Christmas who ended up having one of the most memorable moments of Dunphy’s tenure on N Broad Street.

“He shaved his mustache off because, after calling me every few months once I had left and done so much traveling in trying to make an NBA team, I finally completed the last few credits I had. He said, ‘I’ll cut my mustache off if you graduate. My wife has never seen me without my mustache, and no one has really seen me without it. I’ll do it on national TV.’ I kept my focus and one summer I just locked in and got my degree. He called me to come to the school and it was a great day.”

“If it wasn’t for Coach Dunphy, I might not have a Temple degree,” Christmas said. “He forced that and didn’t care about the basketball part. The most important part was life after basketball, and he always reiterated that. He had us take more classes than we were supposed to. Guys like Luis and Ryan graduated in three and half years because he enforced classes and everything. He cared so much about us graduating.”

“His approach, the way he touches people, the way he cares for others, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Guzman said. “One thing that I admire about him is he made people who weren’t athletes or coaches part of the team. When I was at school, we had about 20 managers then at one point we had like 50 managers. We would have programs come in like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and I would say to him, ‘Coach, why do you do all this?’ He said, ‘You’ll understand at one point in your life, Lu.’ Now here I am being a Division I college coach, pursuing my dream and I see the reason why he did all that. I remember saying to him, ‘Coach, now I understand your message. Everybody in this world is trying their best just to be a part of something and you made others feel part of something whether it was a manager, walk-on or the last person on the bench. You made people feel that they can do anything.’”

“That’s the turning point for a lot of guys who have played for Dunphy,” Wyatt said. “I’m sure they can attest to this but once you can get to a point where you realize he’s not against you but rather coaching you hard, holding you accountable and wants all these things from you, he’s doing this for the betterment of you and the team. That’s where you start to respect him even more. Just looking back, he was hard on me and a lot of my teammates, but it was for the betterment of us, not just as basketball players but as people. I’m thankful for that because he could’ve just let me get away with stuff and slip through the cracks, but he didn’t. It trickled over into my family and how I raise my kids. It affects a lot of my life outside of basketball.”

Dunphy’s final NCAA Tournament appearance came in 2019 behind Shizz Alston Jr. and Quinton Rose. Alston scored 1,458 points at Haverford School then avg. 19.7 ppg as a senior in leading the Owls to March Madness. He culminated his career with 1,597 points and 250 three-pointers made while Rose was a high-volume scorer as well, tallying 1,860 points in an Owls uniform.

Individual success was plentiful, as were the high-quality wins Dunphy accrued during his coaching tenure, notably those over ranked opponents while at the helm of the Owls. During his 13 seasons at Temple, Dunphy's teams defeated nationally-ranked teams a total of 18 times, including victories over Duke, Kansas, Villanova, Syracuse, Connecticut, Florida State, West Virginia, Tennessee, Xavier, and Georgetown. Christmas scored 35 points to down Pearl and No. 8 Tennessee in 2008. Juan Fernandez drained seven three-pointers and finished with 33 points while Brooks added 20 points in a 75-65 win over Jay Wright and No. 3 Villanova in 2009. There was the 2014 win over No. 10 Kansas at the Wells Fargo Center and the victory over No. 3 Syracuse in 2012 where Wyatt poured in 33 points, which included shooting 15-for-15 from the free throw line. Wyatt also spearheaded the win over No. 5 Duke with 22 points the year before that.

From Malvern to Olney to Washington D.C. to University City to N Broad Street and everywhere in between, Dunphy has carried the torch of being Philadelphia basketball’s biggest proponent. No one knows the history better and no one has better contributed to it from a collegiate perspective. He was fiery as an assistant at Penn when Chambers was walking on, and he was as steamed as ever when a questionable call came down in the St. Joe’s game a few days ago. He possesses so many of the same traits that made him a generational coach four decades ago and those traits have rubbed off on a lot of people.

Bowman depicted Dunphy in one word, “Tremendous. When people ask you how you’re doing, you say, ‘Tremendous.’ That one’s world I would use to sum him up.” Guzman detailed, “He taught me how to approach things, how to talk to people, how to be presentable, and how to be a winner.” He is Philadelphia basketball and will carry that mantle as long as he can.

“When you coach in a city like this that gives college basketball as much play as any major metropolitan area, we’re given these platforms to say something, be something, go somewhere or talk to a group of people,” Dunphy said. “We have these platforms; jump in there. I can’t tell you how proud I am of the Coaches vs. Cancer stuff and how many people have jumped in with us. Those people felt it was their duty. Philly has always been that way and that’s what we do. As imperfect as we are, we’re a pretty good group of people. I wouldn’t want to be in any place other than Philadelphia coaching college basketball for as long as I’ve had the opportunity. Nobody has been luckier than me.”