He long ago zipped past the common age for retirement, but still he is with us, fussing and cussing, screaming and pleading, philosophizing and emoting with all the range of an accomplished stage actor.
It doesn’t matter that he turns 69 Sunday, the day after he brings Temple to the Allstate Arena for a matinee with DePaul (8-8). There will be no pipe and slippers for John Chaney, no quiet slide into a sunset.
There won’t be any of that as long as he is healthy, which he clearly is in his 19th season guiding the Owls (10-8) in his 29th season as a college head coach.
There were some age jokes earlier this year when he announced he would be breaking with tradition and holding some practices at night. Always in the past, those practices were before dawn’s early light.
When he heard news of the change, Owls center Ron Rollerson couldn’t help himself.
“I don’t know. I guess there comes a time in every man’s life when a change is needed,” Rollerson said with a straight face. “[Coach] can’t get up at five in the morning every day. I guess twice a week is all he can handle. I guess he feels he’s getting old.”
“Old and soft,” Chaney had said then.
“For the most part, we’re still early in the morning,” he said this week. “I just had to reshuffle the deck because of their activities. I had to because of tutoring, all the demands on these kids’ time.”
But why, at this age, put all these demands on yourself?
“It’s fun,” he said. “And it’s challenging with kids. Good kids. Good people. As long as you have that, that’s part of it.
“When you see growth, when you see them learning, accepting what you’re teaching–every successful coach, teacher, parent is successful for one reason. He’s happy the kids are buying what he’s selling. The kids are listening to me.”
Still, despite their attention, this has been a demanding season for his kids, who entered it without three starters from last year’s team. They were young and faced a steep curve while learning the special style of play Chaney teaches–patient offense, a zone with man-to-man principles on defense. They were inexperienced, and guided by new point guard Lynn Greer, who had to learn to be nothing less than an extension of his coach while on the floor.
This is why it was a surprise when they opened their season with four straight victories and then came within a basket of upsetting mighty Duke in the final of the Preseason NIT.
After only five games, they already resembled another of Chaney’s best creations but then they lost at Miami of Ohio and started spiraling downward.
Quincy Wadley, the Owls’ best shooter and most-experienced performer, went down with a damaged shoulder, and eventually their losing streak reached seven, the longest losing streak of Chaney’s storied career.
Temple snapped it just before Christmas with a victory over Cleveland State, but still turmoil bubbled about the program.
The first to create it was sophomore guard Ron Blackshear, who had left the team during the losing streak and asked for his release so he could transfer to another school. After two weeks of reflection, he was interested in returning to the Owls. Chaney told him it was best to go elsewhere.
Then there was the case of Carlton Aaron, a freshman forward who had complained to an assistant during the losing streak about playing time. After his mother and fiance also whined about it, Chaney indefinitely suspended the player.
Neither Blackshear nor Aaron has returned.
Even when Wadley came back, these earlier exits left Chaney with just a six-man rotation, but his Owls started to fly again. They followed their Cleveland State victory with five more and once again looked dangerous. Then Tuesday they were drilled by 22 by their Philadelphia rival St. Joseph for their worst Big Five defeat since Chaney’s first year at the school.
Chaney didn’t panic and expressed confidence his team could come back, guaranteeing they would be “OK” for DePaul.
“I’ve been asked a thousand times this season [if our team can bounce back],” he said. “I wonder sometimes if [people] expect us to win all our games the rest of the year.”
How does he explain Temple’s inconsistency?
“It’s reasonable to assume when you lose two players, and you lose Quincey Wadley for six, seven games, that will have some effect on up-and-down play,” he said. “And the schedule, in terms of the teams we’ve played [Duke twice, Wake Forest, Wisconsin]. I have to believe if we played Division II teams, or teams close to that, our record would be a little bit better.
“To be where we are right now, I’m very thankful. I’ve been in that situation before in November and December. Kids take a while before they learn our system.”
In a season such as this, how does he motivate himself?
“Most of us coaches who’ve been around, we find ourselves in a little cubicle,” he said with a chuckle. “We’re surrounded by the same people, our life’s established, our whole life’s been nothing but athletics, we find ourselves a little apprehensive of the mainstream.
“So I find myself in a cubicle where I’m safe and sound and confident and a little bit comfortable.”
