The Late Great John Chaney

Perhaps the worst call TigerBlog has ever seen in a basketball game came on Dec. 20, 2004.

The game was between Princeton and Temple in Philadelphia. Princeton trailed by two as the final seconds were winding down. 

Will Venable drove to the basket and put a shot up that was off the window and on its way in, forcing overtime. Then it was swatted away.

Then none of the three officials called the most obvious and easiest goaltending call of all time. No overtime. 

Final score: Temple 48, Princeton 46.

What the heck?

TB will say this: Making that call on that court that night would not have sat well with the home team's coach. Maybe he was just too intimidating a figure to have the whistle blow there?

The winning coach that night was John Chaney, the Hall-of-Famer who turned Temple into a nationally prominent program, especially during a glorious 1987-88 season that saw the Owls reach the No. 1 spot in the national rankings.

Chaney passed away Friday, a few days past his 89th birthday. That game against Princeton in 2004 was the 1,000th of his career.

One of the great things about working in sports, like TB has for more than 30 years, is that you get to see different sides of people you normally only see on TV. Some of them make radically different impressions in person than they do through the media, either for the positive or the negative.

There are figures in sports that TB would have sworn were jerks who turned out to be really nice when he actually met them. There are others who come across as being good guys who clearly aren't when you see them up close.

Then there's the other group, a far, far smaller one. That's the group of people who are such towering figures that when you meet them, you're only emotion is awe.

That was John Chaney. 

There aren't too many people TB has been around in all his time in the sports world who were more simply awesome than John Chaney. Perhaps he needs to define what he means a bit more.

What TB is saying is that there are certain figures who seem to larger than life on TV and then are even more so when you actually meet them. Even John Thompson II didn't bring out the awe in TB the way Chaney did, largely because TB's close relationship with John Thompson III made his father a bit more approachable.

Chaney? 

TB covered a bunch of Temple games when Chaney coached there. He's interviewed him one-on-one and written about him. 

In all that time, he never felt 100 percent relaxed or comfortable around him. It was like being in the presence of a general if you were in the Army. You wanted everything to be buttoned up and shined up, for fear of disappointing the commander.

Chaney was part of what TB would consider to be the most glorious era of Eastern college basketball, and it was driven by the coaches, men who were as much a part of the school's identity as anyone. There were men like Thompson at Georgetown and Rollie Massimino at Villanova and Lou Carnesecca at St. John's and Jim Boeheim (who's shockingly still there) at Syracuse. 

There were others too, at schools who weren't the Big East. People like Speedy Morris at La Salle, for instance.

Two men who were very much part of that were Chaney at Temple and Pete Carril at Princeton.

Interestingly, they never coached against each other. The 1982-83 season was Chaney's first at Temple, after coming over from Cheyney State. His last season was 2005-06.

Prior to that non-goaltending call night in Philly (Joe Scott was the Tiger coach that night), Princeton hadn't played Temple since the 1974-75 season, when Carril was at Princeton. Carril was 2-0 against Temple.

Chaney was 2-0 against Princeton, with the win in 2004 and then another one a year later, in his final season.

TB read a great deal about Chaney after his death from people who knew him a lot better than he did. Pretty much everyone agrees with TB's assessment.

This was a giant of a man, one who did so much for college basketball, for Philadelphia basketball, for opening up educational opportunities, for having such an incredible impact for the better on those who played for him. He was exactly what Princeton wants from its own coaches - he was a coach/teacher/leader/role model.

TB offers condolences to his family and to all of those who were close to him.

John Chaney was, as TB said, awesome.