John Chaney

I am a fan of Temple University's basketball team and its legendary coach, John Chaney, not because I went to Temple. I did not. Not because my son is a Temple alum. He is. I am a fan not just because I am a native Philadelphian. And not just because I brought a partial season packet this year to see Temple basketball. I am a Temple basketball fan out of respect and admiration for John Chaney because of who he is and where he came from. Chaney, like me, is a South Philadelphian.

As Temple's losses have added up, John Chaney's luster has dimmed. He has the well-worn look of a man who has toiled perhaps a little too long on the front line. His temples are a little grayer, his face a little more drawn. Just two years ago, Chaney was being lauded as one of the greatest coaches in college basketball. He was named national coach of the year after guiding the Owls to a 32-2 record, a No. 1 ranking for most of the season, and an appearance in the NCAA East Regional final.

When greatness lingers for a long time, it can get taken for granted. At the Liacouras Center Wednesday night, the stands were half-empty. There were reasons: It was a cold night. The Temple Owls basketball team is having a middling year. The opponent was unexciting. Yet something huge happened, marked by 700 balloons drifting down from the rafters as the band played. John Chaney, the raspy-voice original from North Broad Street, won his 700th game as a college basketball coach, the 16th Division I-A coach to do so, the first African American.

LOCAL HOOPS legend Alonzo Lewis, who died Tuesday night after being hit by a car, still owes old friend John Chaney milk from the days they would bet bottles of it on one-on-one pickup games at the Palestra. "I wanted to play for sodas; he wanted to play for milk. He was a health nut, you know, always believed in being conditioned," Chaney, the longtime Temple coach, who played with Lewis for nearly a decade in the old Eastern League, recalled fondly last night. Just as the former teammates would tease each other about who was the better player whenever they met, Chaney joked through his sadness last night: "I would say, after playing him on the court for so many years, that he still owes me some milk, 'cause I won. " Lewis, 77, a star at La Salle University, was the third-winningest coach in Chester High School's history, with a 237-67 record from 1985 to 1995, including the state championship in '89. He later coached at Cheyney University.

Love him or loathe him, John Chaney is ours. Like Rocky in tattered sweats or fattening cheesesteaks with extra Whiz, the coach of the Temple University men's basketball team is a local gem - slightly tarnished with very human faults - who, somehow, became a Philadelphia institution. And now, under the glow of a national media spotlight that shines on his team (a favorite in the NCAA tournament that started yesterday), his legend will only grow. Cantankerous, outspoken and earnest, he increasingly defines our city - both on the banks of the Delaware and throughout the rest of America.

It was a classic half-court breakaway, and Anthony Gilbert had his 15-year- old mind made up. He was going to the basket from about 20 feet out. And there was nothing to stop him except - ahem! A girl. He drove, dribbling hard, taking long strides. He envisioned a 360-degree- tongue-out-behind-the-back-screaming-slam-dunk. The image was glorious - until something unexpected happened. Instead of visions of Michael Jordan dancing through his head, the girl danced on his head.

If there is anything John Chaney prizes more than NCAA tournament appearances, it is toughness. Last season, Temple's coach failed to get the one, but saw enough of the other in his players after the Owls wandered around the country racking up early-season losses. "Easily, they could have died," Chaney said this week. "They ended up with 18 wins. But guess what? They could have just quit. They never quit. " The lessons start early at Temple. If one of his highly regarded freshmen happens to walk off the early-morning practice court this season with a bloody mouth, Chaney will tell him, "Forget the blood.

The latest hero during Temple's most unlikely NCAA tournament run turns out to be a forward who didn't even play in Temple's first six games, a sophomore from Los Angeles who wasn't a walk-on, more like a walk-up. Greg Jefferson went after Temple. It wasn't the other way around. He even transferred to a Christian school in Philadelphia because he wanted to play for John Chaney. It was a good move. When former assistant Dean Demopoulos saw Jefferson in Conshohocken two years ago, he instantly recommended that the Owls offer him a scholarship.

After 17 seasons as an assistant coach under John Chaney at Temple, Dean Demopoulos got on a plane last night bound for Kansas City, where he will be introduced today as the new basketball coach at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "I'm packing right now," Demopoulos said as he talked about leaving for the Mid-Continent Conference school. "This was the toughest decision I've ever made in my life. It's been the hardest week of my life. It's not easy to uproot your family and leave a job you're very, very comfortable with.

LOCAL HOOPS legend Alonzo Lewis, who died Tuesday night after being hit by a car, still owes old friend John Chaney milk from the days they would bet bottles of it on one-on-one pickup games at the Palestra. "I wanted to play for sodas; he wanted to play for milk. He was a health nut, you know, always believed in being conditioned," Chaney, the longtime Temple coach, who played with Lewis for nearly a decade in the old Eastern League, recalled fondly last night. Just as the former teammates would tease each other about who was the better player whenever they met, Chaney joked through his sadness last night: "I would say, after playing him on the court for so many years, that he still owes me some milk, 'cause I won. " Lewis, 77, a star at La Salle University, was the third-winningest coach in Chester High School's history, with a 237-67 record from 1985 to 1995, including the state championship in '89. He later coached at Cheyney University.

DARRYL CHANEY was dedicated to helping his fellow vets at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Coatesville. He was the kind of guy who would do anything for you, and he made himself so useful to his fellow patients that when he was taken to Brandywine Hospital in his final illness, many of them showed up there to give their support. "He cared about people," said his father, Hall of Fame retired Temple basketball coach John Chaney. "He was always involved in situations where he could help people.

John Chaney remembered that C. Vivian Stringer was the first person he met after signing a contract in 1972 to coach the men's basketball team at what was then Cheyney State College. Stringer was in her second year as the women's coach at the school, which is the nation's oldest historically black institution of higher learning. "I remember seeing him with a big straw hat on," Stringer said with a laugh. On Wednesday, the two Naismith Hall of Fame coaches were back where it all started.

TECHNICALLY, Fran Dunphy won't have his first Senior Night as head coach at Temple until next season, when juniors Ryan Brooks and Luis Guzman - his first two recruits - use up their eligibility. But don't think that just because Dunphy didn't recruit Dionte Christmas, Semaj Inge and Sergio Olmos to North Broad Street, he didn't experience the same emotions that he did for all those Senior Nights he went through during his 17 years at the University of Pennsylvania. In fact, it could be said that these three seniors - the last class to be recruited by John Chaney - might be as special to Dunphy as any he personally brought to any school.

WHEN MOST PEOPLE think of the Spectrum, they think Sixers and Flyers. However, it was the site of the last game for the last college basketball team that won every game. There was also the final shot of the last NCAA Tournament game played there, a shot that would win just about any contest to name the most memorable shot in college basketball history. Tonight's Pittsburgh-Villanova game is the final college basketball game at the Spectrum. The building will come down sometime in the next year.

John Chaney could have been Barack Obama's secretary of defense. Buoyed by the president's inauguration, Chaney, the defensive genius who coached Temple to 516 wins, echoed the words of Obama during his induction into the university's Athletics Hall of Fame yesterday. "It's not about us," he said, "it's about you. " Chaney was inducted, along with longtime team physician Ray Moyer, at an official ceremony earlier in the day. But the 77-year-old icon was honored during halftime of Temple's 80-53 win over Charlotte last night.

ISIT HERE and wonder exactly when I came to realize that the Daily News was no longer a must-read. I include circumstances such as no longer having writers quite like Larry McMullen, or an opinion section that resembles a crying towel for liberal causes, and then it makes sense. A once-good read became a literary cheerleader for local sports teams. That's fine, but every Christmas Eve, John Chaney was a guest on "Daily News Live" and was allowed to spew racial nonsense, never questioned by the host or panel, and the paper lent its name to this.

PHILADELPHIA - Temple men's basketball coach Fran Dunphy today signed a two-year contract extension that will keep him at the school through the end of the 2013-14 season. Dunphy led the Owls to a 21-13 record and an Atlantic 10 championship last season, giving Temple its first NCAA tournament berth in seven years. Dunphy has posted a 33-31 record in the two seasons since he replaced John Chaney. "We knew when we hired Fran Dunphy two years ago that he was the right man to lead Temple basketball," said Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw.

Herb Magee recalled his introduction to John Chaney. "The very first game I played against him, we were down at 16th and Jackson," Magee, the veteran Philadelphia University coach, said yesterday, "and he decided to throw a length-of-the-court pass through Jimmy Lynam's chest. And when the air went out of Jimmy and we picked him up, I thought, 'Who's that guy?' "That's John Chaney. " Chaney, 76, is known nationally for the 24 seasons he coached at Temple plus his 2001 induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

John Chaney has seen gambling scandals infest basketball before. The former Temple basketball coach had just turned 19 in 1951 when one of the biggest in sports history was unfolding. City College of New York, the only team to win both the NCAA tournament and National Invitation Tournament in the same year (1950), was among seven schools caught in point-shaving scandals in 1951. "It just tore apart New York in every aspect," Chaney said Thursday at Temple's Ambler campus, the site of the Chaney-Hill basketball camp that he puts on with Philadelphia basketball icon Sonny Hill.