Read on Twitter
Here’s a VIP, behind the scenes look inside Temple basketball circa 1988. We are in the locker room at The Dean Dome pre-game about to play UNC. This is a game Coach Chaney planned and prepared for since October 15th, the first day of practice.
Coach would say he practices & prepares to beat the best teams in the country. So, if we have a bad stretch for a couple minutes against Duquesne late in the game up 20, he’s not looking at that moment. He’s extrapolating that to when we play the best teams in the county.
Many times during the season he would say things like “you do that against Carolina and you’re gonna get your asses kicked”, stuff like that. Anyway, the pregame locker room talk and instructions were not any different than any pregame.
Coach put the two players on the board that we had to stop and he ran down the things we need to do. Since we’d been building up to this we all felt as if we’d already played this game, in practices, lectures and in our own heads. The confidence level was off the charts.
Coach had great respect for Dean Smith but he also knew that Smith didn’t value the ball and if we got after it on defense they’d turn the ball over like hot cakes (Chaney’s words). In fact, I think UNC had 25 turnovers that game. Up to this point everything is as it usually is.
This is where it got unusual. Coach finished his talk and instructions and normally we head right out to the floor but for some reason we had to wait a few minutes. I think they were about to play the National Anthem (yes, teams stayed in the locker room for that back then).
We weren’t used to this. It was dead silent, glazed eyes staring in a trance. Coach was pacing around. He then reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a comb and started combing his hair. We all looked in wonderment.
He then looks at Howie Evans mid-comb and says “whatta you know about this, boy?” I would say we all chuckled because we were afraid to really let loose with a hearty laugh. Then we beat UNC by 17.
PS. I had 26 points, 9 rebounds this game. My profile picture is a snapshot in time from that game.
