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The numbers seem to be falling into place almost cosmetically for Temple basketball coach Fran Dunphy, and perhaps that’s why he received the call this morning that he was named AAC Coach of the Year. The conference could not have made a better call to a wiser head coach.
Last year, Dunphy was 9-22; this year he is 22-9. He is sitting on 499 career wins now between Temple and Penn, and most bubble observers say he needs one more win to be a sure lock to the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team. How fitting would it be for Dunphy’s No. 500 win to come with a punched ticket to March Madness?
Temple is a slight favorite to beat Memphis in an AAC quarterfinal at Hartford, Ct. on Friday (2 p.m., ESPN2), and Dunphy is a big reason why. Dunphy has been a brilliant coach in postseason conference tournaments, winning three straight when the Atlantic 10 conference was consistently considered the best mid-major conference out there. He also added an A-10 regular-season title and took the Owls to six straight postseason tournaments. In every single one of Dunphy’s seasons at Temple, he has beaten a nationally ranked team and that includes last year’s nine-win season when the Owls knocked off then No. 21 SMU.
He’s also done the impossible in replacing a legend in Temple Hall of Fame coach John Chaney. At Penn, though, following a legend like Dunphy has proven to be impossible as both Glenn Miller and Jerome Allen have been fired and that once-dominant Ivy League power is looking for another replacement.
With Chaney’s blessing, Dunphy took over the Owls and Temple has remained a strong national brand under him. Largely because of the way Dunphy kept Temple a national brand, the Big East extended the school an all-sports invitation in March of 2012.
Now that the football-playing schools from that conference have become the AAC, Temple has taken only a year to move to the upper echelon of the conference under Dunphy. It should not be surprising because Dunphy was named the most underrated coach in the country in a survey of 100 fellow coaches by CBS in 2012, and a Forbes Magazine study in 2012 named him the second-best head coach in the nation for the money. No less an authority than Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski said Temple would win a national championship under Dunphy.
That has not happened yet, but with win No. 500, Dunphy will likely get another chance — albeit a longshot — to make Coach K’s prediction come true.
Mike Gibson is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
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