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City 6 Q+As: Fran Dunphy, La Salle

04/12/2023, 4:15pm EDT
By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)

For how much longer will Fran Dunphy coach? The Big 5 legend turns 75 this fall, having come out of retirement last year to take up the reins at his alma mater, La Salle, after spending three decades as a head coach at fellow city schools Penn (1990-2006) and Temple (2006-19).

But though it’s now been more than five decades since his coaching career started at Army in 1971, Dunphy’s still going strong, winning 15 games in his first year back on the Explorers’ bench, beating one of his former schools (Penn) along the way, as he got a ragtag group playing competitive ball all season long.

Sophomore guard Khalil Brantley (14.3 ppg) and junior Jhamir ‘Jig’ Brickus (9.8 ppg), both of whom have two years of eligibility remaining, are back for the Explorers, who will have to replace Josh Nickleberry (10.9 ppg), Fousseyni Drame (8.8 ppg) and Hassan Drame (6.4 ppg), all of whom hit the portal for their final year of eligibility. 

We talked to Dunphy in late March as part of our series of City 6 Q+As; here’s a transcript of our conversation, edited for readability and length:

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City 6 Q+A Series (Links will appear as stories are published)
MBB: Drexel | La Salle
Penn | St. Joe’s | Temple | Villanova
WBB: Drexel | La Salle | Penn | 
St. Joe’s | Temple | Villanova

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City of Basketball Love: Appreciate you taking some time to talk to us for this series. This was your return to coaching after a few years off; now that you’ve had a few weeks to reflect on the season, how did it feel to be back on the sidelines again and back into the grind of being a Division I head coach?

Fran Dunphy: People ask me how I enjoyed it, and my only way of answering that would be that the season went very, very quickly, so I must have enjoyed it. There was no real stress involved or any of those — obviously we would have liked to have won some more games, but it was enjoyable and the grind wasn’t a typical grind, just because of the newness or whatever the issue was, the season went by very, very quickly.


La Salle men's basketball coach Fran Dunphy goes over notes on the bench at Palestra during a game this past season. (Photo: Owen McCue/CoBL)

CoBL: You were returning to a school in La Salle that you’re plenty familiar with but it had been several decades since you’ve coached there. Where did your institutional familiarity help, and what was the most different?

FD: I’m not sure how to answer that. The familiarity helped with the older generation that I went to school with and maybe some others who are still at La Salle, who have been there a long time, but there was a comfort level just because of the Christian Brothers that are around, and then the other stuff I just got involved with was just the coaching piece, and no matter where you are, you’re still coaching young people and they have their own ways of looking at things and they may be troubled by something and you feel like you can help by just adding some sense of calm and give out some wisdom that everything’s going to be okay, that we’ll just play some good basketball and you’ll enjoy your time at La Salle.

CoBL: Being back at La Salle and back in Atlantic 10, how was it being back in a league where you still know so many of the coaches and programs?

FD: Obviously I do know many of the coaches but that was the case where I was in the American as well. And once the ball goes up it’s just coaching basketball and just coaching your guys, so you’re not even thinking about who’s down the other end, other than what you’ve learned that they do as a group and how they play, each particular school plays. It was good, the travel was good, obviously you have a home-and-home against St. Joe’s and not too bad travel-wise versus GW and Rhode Island and UMass and so that part of it went fine. I knew, obviously, the commissioner and associate commissioner, Bernadette and Sean Carney, so yeah, there was a comfort there.

CoBL: What’s been your game plan since the season ended — now in this new era of the transfer portal, how do those first three or four weeks of the offseason change from before?

FD: You know, we got used to that last year with the transfer portal. I got the job in early April, so we lost three guys to the portal, picked up two guys in the portal. We’re going to probably lose a couple of people in the portal this year and we’ll try to replace them with some people that want to be here at La Salle, so we have a full season of knowing about how it works and just scouring the list of people that possibly could help us, and of course we spent a lot of time talking with our guys as to what they wanted — are they staying, are they looking to make a change, do they want to investigate what else is out there? We’re in a different world, you just have to adjust to it.

CoBL: I know you said you dealt with it some last year, but I would imagine it’s somewhat different when you’re dealing with players that you’ve coached for the last year who are making that decision versus coming into a program and having those players make that decision.

FD: I would agree with that, I would agree with that. But it’s still, it’s guys that you know a little bit. I did know, I got to know Clifton Moore and Jack Clark and Christian Ray fairly well before they decided they were going to make their move, so I would love to keep everybody, I would have loved to have kept those three last year, I would have enjoyed the guys who are in the transfer portal now staying, but I do value what they are able to do to look at other opportunities and wish them well if they leave and wish them well if they decide to stay at La Salle.

CoBL: At the moment, the Drames are in the portal and Josh Nickelberry is in the portal, are you anticipating any others? 

FD: I’m not anticipating anybody else but you never know. Things could change, they have until May 11 to make a decision if they want differently. But of course we’ll wish everybody the best and I hope that those guys that do leave find a really good situation and that it works out for them.

CoBL: If my math is right, then at the moment you’d have four open scholarships? 

FD: Three. Ryan Zan, who was with us as a walk-on last year, he’ll be on scholarship this year.

CoBL: With those three scholarships then, what’s the priority when you’re looking at available players, whether that’s the portal, high school kids, post-grads, etc.?

FD: I think we’re probably, like most programs, if you have three scholarships to give, you’d like to get two portals and one senior. To try to get older sooner is seemingly the world that we live in, and so that’s my guess. 

CoBL: In terms of this offseason and player development, you had five freshmen — Rokas saw a decent amount of time, Andres a little bit, the others not as much. How important is this offseason for that group, and are you looking at that group as one that should be participating in the rotation a whole lot more next year? 

FD: Very much so, I think that’s absolutely a given, yes indeed. All of those guys will be expected to play, play well, make the necessary strides to be the best player they can be. Absolutely.

CoBL: Any of them in particular that you feel have come a long way behind the scenes this year?

FD: A kid like Lucas Mercandino, he wasn’t able to play last year, so he sat out, but now the practices take on a whole different aspect for him. He maybe makes a mistake on the court, you might say ‘Lucas, we can’t have that, that’s not gonna be good enough,’ but last year when you’re just practicing, we could put up with a mistake or two. Now let’s see if we can’t get rid of those mistakes that you make and turn them into good plays. So it’s that kind of thing, it’s a different world for somebody like him at this point.

CoBL: One guy we haven’t touched on, Khalil Brantley took a nice step forward this year. It was obviously your first year working with him, but what do you think he was doing better this year than what you’d seen of him as a freshman? Where does he need to continue to focus moving forward?

FD: I thought he played well, thought he scored well. He’s a defender that we really need for him to be as good as he can be keeping people in front of him and keeping their guards away from our big guys so they’re not going to get in foul trouble, some of those things he can improve on. But he’s just a good guy to coach, we have a good relationship where if he sees something out there, I’m going to trust in what he sees, same thing with Brickus, those two guys, they basically play the same position — sometimes they’re points, sometimes they’re scoring guards, but they both know the game very well, so I trust in how they approach the game.

CoBL: It also seemed like Daeshon Shepherd was starting to take some big steps forward too, how important is this offseason for him and where does he need to improve?

FD: It’s the next step in your progression. You’re getting right to it after the season is over, a couple weeks after the season is over, and then you’ve got the eight weeks that we’re allowed in summertime and then when school gets back in session we’re back in that four hours per week cycle, and all of these times are so critical for them to get better and really study the game, study their bodies. Let that body heal but at the same time, work at it so that it’s going to be ready for a terrific season. I think all of those guys are going through that process now.

CoBL: You mentioned this season feeling really quick, which like you said is a good sign, means you’re enjoying it. When you took this job you knew it wasn’t going to be a 20-year commitment — is it year-by-year, or what’s your thought process? 

FD: That’s a good way to look at it, yeah. Year to year is a good way to look at it.

CoBL: And you’re feeling good for next year?

FD: Feeling really good and anxious to work with our guys.


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