The Phenomenal College Basketball Life of Fran Dunphy
The Phenomenal College Basketball Life of Fran Dunphy
'Life,' he says, 'is about making good choices'
PHILADELPHIA — When you walk into Tom Gola Arena, you’re hit with an instant blast from the past. The 25-year-old arena is the least renovated among Philadelphia’s Big 5 and still doubles as La Salle’s practice facility, a throwback way of doing business that no longer applies to the other Big 5 schools with significantly more resources.
The program’s history dates back to 1930 and is on full display throughout the 3,400-seat arena. Banners commemorate the 1952 NIT championship, the 1954 NCAA championship, and a dozen appearances in each tournament. Twenty-three players have worn The Explorers’ blue and gold and gone on to either the NBA or ABA, with five retired jersey numbers hanging on the walls.
And during any given practice you can find Fran Dunphy, the team’s 75-year-old coach, on the court doing … pushups … with his players?
Dunphy might be living history — in late November he became the 68th coach in Division 1 men’s college basketball to win 600 games — but he’ll be damned if anyone mistakes him for a relic.
“Having a guy like Dunphy,” says junior guard Khalil Brantley, “I feel like I’d run through a thousand brick walls for this man.”
The 600-win fraternity includes a who’s who of big-time coaches: Jim Larrañaga, Tom Izzo, John Wooden, Rick Pitino, Jim Boeheim, Bob Knight, Bob Huggins, Jim Calhoun, Dean Smith, Adolph Rupp, Gary Williams, Jay Wright, Rollie Massimino, John Chaney and Mike Krzyzewski, who became Army’s head coach the year after Dunphy ended his tenure as an assistant at West Point.
What does being in rarefied company mean to Dunphy? Whistle around his neck at a recent practice, his eyes following the action in all directions, he reflected on the milestone for a brief moment and said, “You know what I’m thinking about? It’s Temple tomorrow. I’m worried about Picarelli making 10 threes.”
Dunphy obsesses over the smallest details, all but putting the names of opponents on the jerseys of his scout-team players. This rapt attention was instilled early in his coaching career as an assistant at American University. He worked there from 1980-82 under Williams, who would become a Hall of Fame coach and win the 2002 NCAA championship at Maryland.
“The way that he coached, he was more ready than the players every single day,” Dunphy says. “He never took a day off. He was more ready than the players and I learned so much from that. I’m not nearly as good as Gary was. He had every attention to detail covered. I’m just trying to do the best I can every single day to get these guys thinking about how phenomenal a life we have as college basketball players.”
To that end, Dunphy never loses sight of the big picture. Throughout a two-hour practice, he’ll drop gems such as, “Life is about making good choices” and “It’s going to take technique and phenomenal effort to be successful.” Though he can be hard on players — he won’t think twice about pausing practice or film sessions to give an individual a quick lecture in front of the team — Dunphy believes in building them up and seeing things from their perspective. He also believes it’s easier for them to play the game when they have the freedom to approach him with suggestions.
“I want to hear their opinions,” he says. “We've run things because our guards have said, ‘I like this.’ I don't care where the good ideas come from. Perfect. It's great if it comes from within the group and you give that ownership to players. That's the ultimate in being a leader, is giving ownership. Empowering your people.”
In Philadelphia and throughout the Delaware Valley, Dunphy has earned the nickname “Mr. Big 5” for being the only person to be the head coach at three of Philly’s Big 5 schools: Penn (1989-2006), Temple (2006-2019) and his alma mater, La Salle (2022-present).
The Big 5 was founded in 1955, consisting of those three schools as well as Villanova and St. Joseph's. For most of the Big 5’s history, the schools would all play each other once a year at The Palestra, with the team that had the best record in the end being crowned the champion. (Dunphy’s teams have won at least a share of the city series eight times.) As time passed, games stopped being played at The Palestra and Wright’s Villanova teams came to dominate the city series.
In 2023, Drexel was finally added to the group as part of a Big 5 revamp. The new format now places the six schools into two pods, with each school playing the others in its pod before matching up with the squad of the same standing in the opposite pod in a triple-header at the Wells Fargo Center. This year’s Big 5 championship was settled on Saturday, with St. Joe’s beating Temple, which had advanced with a triple-OT win over La Salle.
Among Dunphy’s 601 career wins, he counts 10 Ivy League regular-season championships, three Atlantic 10 tournament championships, two Atlantic 10 regular-season championships, and an AAC championship. He’s been named a conference coach of the year four times, and he’s taken two different teams to a combined 18 NCAA tournaments, going as far as the Sweet Sixteen twice. He’s coached a total of five future NBA players. All of his chargers routinely use the same word to describe him: teacher.
“He’s more than a basketball coach,” says former Atlantic-10 Player of the Year Khalif Wyatt, who played for Dunphy at Temple from 2009-13. “Helping raise boys to men through basketball. He teaches valuable lessons that apply on the court, but off the court as well.”
For all the wins, Dunphy’s 346 career losses have also been invaluable when it comes to imparting wisdom. “There's a benefit when you work really hard, but you come up short and don't win the game,” he says. “There's tremendous benefit in that because that's what life is all about. You're going to try certain things in life — maybe a business or a relationship — and it doesn't work out well. Then you’ve got to move on. You’ve got to think of something else.”
In 2019, Dunphy hung up his whistle and retired with 580 wins, handing the reins at Temple to Owls great Aaron McKie.
That was his first chance at retirement.
When Temple’s athletic director, Pat Kraft, left for Boston College in 2020, Dunphy was asked to fill in as the school’s interim athletic director. He did so until a full-time hire was made in October 2021.
That was his second chance at retirement.
He could now finally settle into new routines with his wife, Ree, and his adult son, J.P., an actor, singer and dancer who still lives in Philly, right?
A few months later, La Salle fired its basketball coach. The school called Dunphy, who’d been a player there from 1967-70 and twice been an assistant for a total of four seasons, and asked for a favor.
“I didn’t need to coach anymore,” Dunphy says. “As a matter of fact, I’m very big on, I’ve had my turn. It’s somebody else’s turn at some point. But I’ll do anything I can to help my alma mater.”
La Salle finished 15-19 last season (7-11 in conference play) and pulled off two upsets in the Atlantic 10 tournament. The Explorers are off to a 6-2 start this season, claiming Big 5 wins over Drexel and Penn. With a roster consisting of the guard tandem of Khalil Brantley and Jhamir Brickus, and Lithuanian big man Rokas Jocius, there’s no telling when Dunphy might be thinking about another shot at retirement.
“It’s an amazing opportunity I’ve been given,” Dunphy says of coaching again. “I’ll do the best I can for as long as I can. But these guys will show me the way and they’ll let me know how long I can do this.”
Dunphy doesn’t think of himself as an innovator or an original thinker in the game. He credits his .635 career winning percentage to simply paying attention and taking the best of what he’s seen work elsewhere. “I was trying to steal as much as I could,” he says. “Let’s see if we can copy that. Let me borrow that concept. I think we all do that. We’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re just learning from each other.”
But 600-plus wins and counting simply don’t happen just by hanging around long enough. When he’s pressed to reflect on the road he’s traveled — all the good choices, phenomenal effort and pushups along the way — he allows himself an actual moment to stop obsessing over all the details of the next opponent and speak to the heart of his coaching philosophy.
“The amount of people that I’ve met, the people I’ve worked with, the people I’ve had a chance to coach,” he says. “I’m sure there are luckier people in the world than me. I just haven’t met them yet.”