Temple University Head Coach Chaney Retires After 741 Career Wins

By Mark Hoerrner

He could scrap with the best of them, even the venomous Bobby Knight. In fact, he once threatened to kill former University of Massachusetts coach John Calipari.

Despite his hard-driving and sometimes abrasive coaching style, Chaney won the respect of his players. He often had to deal with players who came from impoverished neighborhoods where survival, rather than education, was the order of the day. Chaney sought to change that by using sports to give them a chance at education. One of the great teacher-coaches of his time, Chaney spent as much time counseling his players as he did teaching them shot drills.

After 225 wins and a Division II title under his belt at Cheney State College in Philadelphia, Temple University hired Chaney to turn the school’s team into a winner. He promised to do so but made it clear to the administration that he would do so on his own terms. Already 50 years old when he joined the Temple athletic staff, he said he was "too old" to go gently into what would be a 24-year career at the university.

Chaney racked up a record of 516 wins, 252 losses at Temple as he hard-charged onto courts where previous coaches had feared to tread. He leaves the college on a high note, his Owls having knocked three of the top-seated teams in the country off their roosts, including demolishing Georgia Washington just before Chaney announced his retirement. The 74-year-old and his Owls made five NCAA regional final appearances but never managed to record a title. However, his lengthy and successful career ushered him into the Hall of Fame in 2001.

In looking back over his career, it’s not the games he remembers as much as the young men who played them. He admitted players into his program who had not done well academically but in whom he saw the uncut diamond of character. Over the years playing at Temple, those players would be cut and polished by Chaney, turning their shot at college glory into a solid educational experience.

"Don’t give up on young people because they don’t fail you," Chaney said during his press conference announcing his retirement. "I’ve never had a young person to fail. They don’t even know how much they can give, I don’t care how much you ask them, how much you beg them, how much you plead with them to give more, they don’t know what they can give until its done, until its over. Keep asking for more. Keep raising that ceiling. Keep raising the floor so that they have a chance to make it."

Chaney will to fade into the background now, his days of living large on the court behind him, to live out the rest of his life peacefully with his ailing wife, Jeanne, who is facing surgery in the coming months. Although no announcement has yet been made, pundits are offering up Penn State’s Fran Dunphy and Drexel University’s Bruiser Flint as possible replacements.