Post by thetulsawarrior on Jan 30, 2021 13:00:01 GMT -6
LEGENDARY TEMPLE COACH, JOHN CHANEY PASSED AWAY THIS WEEK. HE WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE BASKETBALL COACHES. IN A SPORTS ILLUSTRATED PROFILE I SAW THIS SIDE NOTE ABOUT THE TIME HIS Cheyney State team played UW-Green Bay for the NCAA D2 Title. I think the unnamed coach in the story might have been Dave Buss. Does anyone have any insights?
“A man must set his jaw as the team bus is getting ready to head to the airport for the Division II Final Four in 1978, and his sixth man appears without a necktie. He must leave the kid home. As he's showering a few hours before the national championship game, he hears a knock at his door, shouts out and learns it's the opposing coach, coming to his hotel room to wish him well—nobody has ever done that before. And suddenly he feels the old suspicion of anything new, of anyone who might be trying to get an edge on him, and so he bursts out of the shower naked and soapy, raising the ante, hugging and kissing the coach, leaving him covered with suds, then bids a cheery farewell and patters back into the shower, scowling. "Nothin' wrong with your last name being Trust," he says, "as long as your first name's Mis."
Nobody's going to pull one over on him. He'll croak, "Out!" at anything that's even close to the line when he's playing tennis; call timeout, for crying out loud, when he's trapped in the corner in a pickup game of basketball, and scream at the first fool who says, "You can't do that." His heart turns to jelly for all of society's losers—but goddam if he's going to be one of them. He beats that coach, by the way, who interrupted his shower. Wins the Division II national title with his sixth man sitting in his dorm, wins Pennsylvania's Distinguished Faculty Award for his work in the community, classroom and gym, but who notices?”
Here's the entire Chaney profile piece. vault.si.com/vault/1994/02/28/the-whittler-temple-basketball-coach-john-chaney-uses-all-his-rage-and-passion-to-carve-lifes-complexity-down-to-a-few-simple-certainties
“A man must set his jaw as the team bus is getting ready to head to the airport for the Division II Final Four in 1978, and his sixth man appears without a necktie. He must leave the kid home. As he's showering a few hours before the national championship game, he hears a knock at his door, shouts out and learns it's the opposing coach, coming to his hotel room to wish him well—nobody has ever done that before. And suddenly he feels the old suspicion of anything new, of anyone who might be trying to get an edge on him, and so he bursts out of the shower naked and soapy, raising the ante, hugging and kissing the coach, leaving him covered with suds, then bids a cheery farewell and patters back into the shower, scowling. "Nothin' wrong with your last name being Trust," he says, "as long as your first name's Mis."
Nobody's going to pull one over on him. He'll croak, "Out!" at anything that's even close to the line when he's playing tennis; call timeout, for crying out loud, when he's trapped in the corner in a pickup game of basketball, and scream at the first fool who says, "You can't do that." His heart turns to jelly for all of society's losers—but goddam if he's going to be one of them. He beats that coach, by the way, who interrupted his shower. Wins the Division II national title with his sixth man sitting in his dorm, wins Pennsylvania's Distinguished Faculty Award for his work in the community, classroom and gym, but who notices?”
Here's the entire Chaney profile piece. vault.si.com/vault/1994/02/28/the-whittler-temple-basketball-coach-john-chaney-uses-all-his-rage-and-passion-to-carve-lifes-complexity-down-to-a-few-simple-certainties