Legendary coach Fran Dunphy to retire at the end of the season

Legendary La Salle coach, Fran Dunphy, is retiring at the end of the basketball season.

In a press conference held on Monday, February 24, Coach Dunphy said, ” It’s ridiculous. The life that I’ve had. No one should be this fortunate. But I have been. And I feel that way every single day. And, again, grateful to so many of you who have been so much a part of this life that I’ve led. And, so with that, I’m grateful. Thankful, because I’ve been part of teams my whole life, and I’ve achieved that level of peace.”

“If we can do good for others, it’s the best feeling in the world. And hopefully I can do that a lot more days in my lifetime here. But I’m thankful to La Salle for asking me to come back. I’m thankful to La Salle for embracing me in this, this endeavor I had. And, that’s the last thing I would say is that we still got we still got a season to finish here.”

According to Dunphy’s professional bio on La Salle’s website, Dunphy is the “all-time winningest coach in Philadelphia Big 5 history”.

Dunphy is a 1970 graduate of the university and was a dual sport athlete playing basketball and baseball. He is currently in his third season as the head coach of La Salle University.

As a senior at La Salle, Dunphy averaged 18.6 points per game.

Throughout his time as a Philadelphia coach, Dunphy has amassed more than 600 victories over his 30 years as head coach at Penn (1989-06) and Temple (2006-19).

“In his first season as head coach for La Salle, Dunphy guided the Explorers to the Atlantic 10 Championship Tournament quarterfinals for the first time since 2015 and helped them win two games in the tournament for the first time since 2002. He also oversaw an Explorer squad that won 15 games for the second time in four seasons and go on a five-game winning streak from Feb. 1-15.” said La Salle.

Following his graduation, Dunphy became a coaching assistant on La Salle’s 1979-80 squad that earned a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

He continued to spend five seasons as an assistant at American University before returning home to join La Salle’s staff from 1985-88.

In 1989, Dunphy was named head coach at the University of Pennsylvania where he spent 17 seasons, winning 10 Ivy League titles, post nine 20-win seasons, and earning a total of 310 victories – the most by any coach in Penn history.

Dunphy then continued his career at Temple in 2006 where he spent 13 seasons. Dunphy’s squads defeated nationally-ranked teams a total of 18 times, including victories over Duke, Kansas, Villanova, Syracuse, Connecticut, Florida State, West Virginia, Tennessee, Xavier, and Georgetown.  

In 2020, Dunphy became the interim athletic director at Temple.

“I want them to walk together forever and ever and be great friends and there’s nothing like that. And that’s what’s so great about team sports. You get a chance to walk together forever with your teammate and we are all on teams. Doesn’t have to be LaSalle men’s basketball. We’re all in teams or families or teams or businesses or teams.” said coach Dunphy.

“We’re going to work our butts off to be the best team that we can be and I have great faith and trust in these guys that we will, being in position to compete as best we can, in our world.”

Looking forward to his retirement, Coach Dunphy says, “It’s someone else’s turn now, I’ve been unbelievably lucky to have a turn since I was 40 years old as a head coach. And now, 36 years later and, a couple of years off, 33 total years doing this. It’s been a blast.”

As far as retirement goes, Coach Dunphy wants to, “… do as much stuff as I can and, you know, whether it’s with family or whether it’s with friends. I think to do things for others is what I’d like to do”

“I could never repay LaSalle for what it gave to me. Gave me a chance, gave me a scholarship, gave me an opportunity to play basketball. And then they gave me a chance to be an assistant coach. And, I never would have been having the life that I’ve had without LaSalle.”

Dunphy gave the following advice for young coaches starting their careers, ” You can do 1 or 2 things, you can complain about it, or you can say, you know what? I got to adjust. I got to figure this out. And, we’re in an interesting time in college athletics, and I don’t know that we’re going to be centered for another 3 to 5, maybe even more years of coming together. You can’t get discouraged by it. You just have to deal with it and figure it out and then try to coach them up like crazy. And, that’s the hard part. That’s the hard part to get everybody on the same page. You know, times are different, times are different. And I’ve always said that the kids are all the same. They just want to be coached. I think they want guidance. I think they want to be held accountable. And when you do hold them accountable, they seem to do great. And, so I think we can still do that. It might take a little more patience by everybody around us. You know, those people that care so much about college basketball just be a little bit more patient because we’re still all trying to figure this thing out. Do the best you can with what you have, where you are.”