Rich Hofmann: Emotional reunion as Cornell's Donahue prevails over Temple's Dunphy

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The longest walk for Fran Dunphy was a journey of only a few steps. It is hard to imagine the emotions that the Temple coach felt. He is a superior coach who has not won an NCAA Tournament game since the mid-'90s, and he was again making that quick, painful journey to congratulate the winner. Only this time, the winner was his former assistant coach and close friend, Cornell's Steve Donahue.

They had kind of been avoiding each other, naturally enough. During the week, Dunphy said he texted Donahue at one point, just so he could tell people that they had talked - because everyone kept asking him if they had talked. Everybody in the business of competing can imagine the cavalcade of emotions that both of them must have been feeling as they grew closer, step-by-step, but imagining it and living it are two different things.

In previous years - they had met a dozen times when Dunphy was still at Penn, with Dunphy winning them all - Donahue said that sometimes he caught himself looking down the sideline at Dunphy during games. The respect he has for his old boss is unending.

But now they were coming together, with Donahue as the victor this time, a 78-65 upset winner in a game that didn't really seem like an upset at all when you watched it - such was the thoroughness of the thrashing.

They shook hands, embraced, talked. It might have lasted 5 seconds.

"I've never beaten him until now, and he says the same thing after every game, and he's such a darned good coach," Donahue said. "I am torn right now with that feeling in my stomach. I just respect the heck out of him."

Dunphy has made the walk a dozen times in his career, and now three straight with Temple. But this is the first time he has done it with his team wearing the white jerseys, as the higher seed (No. 5 against No. 12 Cornell). It had to make it that much harder.

The Owls were the regular-season and tournament champions of the Atlantic 10. They didn't like their seed, didn't like Cornell's seed, didn't like any of it - and that was all fair enough. They still needed to win the game, though, and they all knew it.

With that, as they came together, Dunphy appeared to do most of the talking. Somebody asked him if it was emotional.

"I said, 'You worked hard, you deserved this, I'm happy for you and your team, and go get 'em,' " Dunphy said, smiling. "I don't think that was overly emotional."