Matchless legend steps down

Longtime Temple coach Chaney retires

The Associated Press: "Excuse me while I disappear," [John] Chaney said, his shirt unbuttoned and his unraveled tie draped over his shoulders.

With those words, Chaney left the podium Monday and retired after 24 seasons at Temple, ending a 34-year coaching career of fatherly off-the-court mentoring that was sometimes overshadowed by a temper that got the better of him.

"It's always a very traumatic time, but it is time," Chaney said. "Temple gave me a chance to make my own decision and that's the great thing about it. Right now I'm faced with another problem with my wife, so it's the right time to go."

Chaney will not coach the Owls' opening NIT game against Akron on Tuesday night because his wife was scheduled to undergo a procedure for an undisclosed health problem. ...

The 74-year-old Chaney guided Temple to 17 NCAA Tournament appearances, including five NCAA regional finals -- where he went 0-5 and never made the Final Four. He was twice named national coach of the year and entered the Hall of Fame in 2001.

Chaney also wiped away tears from behind his sunglasses and talked at length about a favorite subject -- education's role in helping the poor and disadvantaged.

"I'm going to be mean and ornery when I see something that's wrong and I'm going to try and right it," Chaney said.

Chaney has 741 wins as a college coach, including a 516-252 record at Temple, where he won seven Atlantic 10 conference titles. His teams did remarkably well considering Chaney couldn't recruit the high school All-Americans who filled the rosters of the power conferences.

Only Bob Knight, Eddie Sutton, Lute Olson, and Mike Krzyzewski are the active coaches with more career victories. ...

Last season, Chaney seemed on his way out. He inserted a player he called a "goon" into a game against Saint Joseph's for the sole purpose of committing hard fouls because he thought the Hawks were using illegal screens. A Saint Joseph's player, John Bryant, ended up with a broken arm after being knocked out of the air. Chaney later apologized and was suspended for five games.

In 1984, Chaney grabbed George Washington coach Gerry Gimelstob by the shoulders at halftime of a game. In 1994, he had a heated exchange following a game against UMass in which he threatened to kill coach John Calipari. Chaney apologized and was suspended for a game. The two later became friends.

He was a father figure for players who often came to Temple from broken homes, violent neighborhoods and bad schools. With notoriously early morning practices, Chaney talked about life nearly as much as he taught the intricacies of his matchup zone defense. He frequently said his biggest goal simply was to give poor kids a chance to get an education.

"They just want to bounce the ball and dribble the ball, but I talk about things that are going to stay with them for the rest of their lives," Chaney said. "Somewhere along the line, it will reverberate and they'll remember it."

The NYTimes article adds:

In an age of increasingly theatrical basketball, Chaney demanded discipline from his players. He forced them to practice at 5:30 in the morning so they would be freed for class and study. And he insisted that they not commit turnovers, convinced that the key to victory was protecting the ball and getting more shot attempts than the opponent. ...

He became that same sort of father figure to a number of his players, 70 to 80 percent of whom, Chaney estimated, came from one-parent families.

"He was my mother and my father," Mark Macon, an assistant coach and former star player at Temple, said of Chaney on Comcast SportsNet, the cable network. "He'd tell me the right thing to do and not to. I don't have words to say what that meant to me."

In some ways you could see Chaney as a less-successful and less savvy version of Georgetown's John Thompson--he never got the national title that Thompson had and wasn't as successful at getting polite company to look beyond his rough edges.

But I doubt Macon or his teammates would want anyone else on their sidelines. He was always interesting to watch; like many people who care too much he had his share of 'incidents' over the years, but if you listened to what he said and did he had a pretty clear-eyed view of the ugly reality that is NCAA basketball in today's America.

He's one of those once-in-a-lifetime figures; he was no saint, but he was always himself and it totally fits that he retires in part because of concern over his wife's health. I'll miss Chaney... although I won't miss the seeming-yearly ritual of trying to figure out how many upsets his matchup zone will wreak in my bracket.

Photo of John Chaney by the Associated Press.

Photo of John Chaney at practice by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images.