City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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PHILADELPHIA — Fran McCaffery is living with a friend right now until things get situated. His new office is barren. He’s still in the process of moving everything from Iowa back to Philadelphia, where everything started for McCaffery over 60 years ago.

The Big 5 is in his blood. It’s in his very fiber.

The new Penn coach can still remember going to the Palestra when he was five with his older brother, legendary Delco Times columnist Jack McCaffery, throwing streamers on the court. The brothers used to sneak down to the court and cozy up on the seats by the Penn locker room, on the two benches behind the Penn team with their parents, Jack and Shirley. Fran played for the Quakers, a 1982 Wharton School graduate, and there is a black-and-white picture of him hanging in the Palestra. He brought his Iowa, Lehigh and Siena teams to play at the Palestra, his basketball home away from home.

Now, he’ll be coaching fulltime there as the Quakers’ head coach.

McCaffery, 65, arrives with a hefty pedigree.

He has a 548-384 overall record, a .588 winning percentage, in 29 years as a head coach (43 overall) at Lehigh (3 seasons), UNC Greensboro (6), Siena (5), and the University of Iowa, where he spent 15 seasons and departed as the Hawkeyes' all-time winningest coach with 297 victories. More impressive, the four programs he inherited over the years had a combined record of 35-84 (.204) the season prior to his arrival. By year three, they had a combined record of 89-45 (.664). McCaffery has coached 12 teams to NCAA Tournament appearances and five to the NIT.

He's a proven winner. He comes with a “Philly mentality” and has built a young, dynamic coaching staff that includes former Council Rock North and George School coach Ben Luber, former Plymouth-Whitemarsh star Ronald Moore, who played for McCaffery at Siena, and Tristan Spurlock, who was on McCaffery’s Iowa staff as the Hawkeyes’ director of player development/assistant coach.

Nicknamed “White Magic,” McCaffery played at Penn during a different era, light years, it seems, when mid-majors did not have mountains of NIL money and mountains of talent to climb over to make deep March runs in the NCAA Tournament, as the Quakers did with Tony Price and James “Boney” Salters in reaching the 1979 Final Four, losing to Magic Johnson and eventual national champion Michigan State, which beat Indiana State and Larry Bird.

McCaffery was a red-shirt freshman on the 1979 Penn Final Four team, having transferred back to the Philadelphia area from Wake Forest.

This is another homecoming.

“For me, the opportunity to come home and coach at my alma mater, to go to work every day, essentially at the Palestra, there is no greater feeling than that,” said McCaffery, a 1977 La Salle High graduate who has his business degree from the prestigious Wharton School and his master’s degree from Lehigh. “My love for this institution, this program and its history, I feel incredibly blessed. It’s more interesting to me that there is actually a picture of me in the Palestra (laughs), because there were a lot better players than me. But I was on some really good teams, and that is more representative of that. We had some great teams here in the early-1980s, but it goes way back to the 1960s, and 1970s.”

After leaving Iowa, McCaffery said, he was not thinking in any way of retiring. Penn fired coach Steve Donahue on March 10 after an 8-19 season, and compiling a 131-130 overall and 63-63 Ivy League mark in nine seasons.

Penn athletic director Alanna Wren and McCaffery began talking. A process began and Wren and Penn decided on McCaffery.

“Knowing the history of Penn basketball, and how great the Big 5 is, coming here every Saturday night for years since I was a little kid, it was always a big deal for me,” he said. “I was really young, five, six, in that range. Jack (his brother) and I would sneak down, and we figured out that didn’t sell the first two rows. We did this right up through high school. I always used to think how cool that would be to play here (at the Palestra). Now, I’m coaching here.”

Can McCaffery win here at Penn?

The Quakers have been to the NCAA Tournament once (2016-17) in the last 17 years—and prior to that, back to the 2006-07 season. The Quakers are 48-66 over the last four years, with three of the four finishing under .500 and going 7-21 in the Ivy League combined over the last two years. Donahue is a highly respected coach.

There is quite bit of rebuilding that needs to be done.

Former Lower Merion star Sam Brown, who led the Ivy League in scoring, averaging 19.3 points per game, including dropping 42 points in a 92-87 win over Columbia—the most by a Penn men’s player since 1989—transferred out to Davidson, the first major signing under new Davidson assistant general manager and Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry, a Davidson alum.  

“Certain things that are absolutes, recruiting young people with talent and character, most importantly character, and you establish a style of play, you build a program, and build a culture,” McCaffery said. “That’s how you win. In today’s world of NIL, and pay-for-play, which is not legal in the Ivy League, NIL is, recruiting is complicated. Maintaining your players is complicated, and having to resign your own guys every year, like you do now, is complicated, and figuring to out what the market is, is complicated. We are a need-based institution, that is selling what we need to be selling, and that is a college degree that will change your life.”

And McCaffery has a coaching staff he can sell recruits.

(Photo courtesy Ethan Young/Penn Athletics)

“I have a great coaching staff,” McCaffery said. “Ronald was my starting point guard at Siena, and Tristan comes over with me from Iowa. He was with me for three years. He’s a graduate of Central Florida. He was a great player. He played overseas. I have had my eye on Ben for a long time. We’ve talked about this for a long time. It’s unreal how this has worked out. David Duda Jr. (from Methacton) is the director of basketball operations. There are a lot of area connections.

“I’m selling Penn on a lot of things. You are with building a relationship and discuss your coaching style. I believe in a positive coaching style and building confidence. You are selling one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, that has produced very successful people. My job is to connect those guys with successful individuals in the corporate community who have come from Penn, which in the past was not legal, but with NIL deals, is big today.”

What will be different, McCaffery admitted, is when he will sit down and speak to a recruit and his family, academics will at the forefront.

“I can tell you where I came from we would have recruiting meetings with families and academics would never came up,” he said. “That’s not going to be the case here. You are buying into something way bigger, playing in the Big 5, playing at a great school, with a fun, fast style of play, playing in the Ivy League, and you will get a great degree that will mean something for the rest of your life. That will be a lot of people who will want that. Some are going to grab the money. I’m going to get, ‘I love ya, but I have a bag over here …’ I get that. Go ahead, I hope it works out for them.

“For many years, if kids can go to the NBA, they should go grab the bag. Now, you have guys getting seven-figure deals to go to other colleges. I’ve had several of my players from Iowa leave Iowa after I left for seven-figure deals. I’m thrilled for them. They didn’t go to Iowa expecting money. That’s all happened in the last two-and-a-half years.”

Considering the obstacles and current landscape of college basketball, can Penn, and not just Penn, St., Joe’s, La Salle, Drexel, Temple, and every other mid-major college basketball, win?

“It’s harder,” said McCaffery, whose teams have been generally top five in offense nationally yet lead the nation in assist/turnover ratio. “It’s harder, but it’s not impossible. I think if you can get the right players, play the right way and play together, in college basketball, where there are so many games decided by five points or less, you can win close games. We’re going to play fast. We’re going to recruit players for that style. We’re going to try and score into the 90s. We’re going to shoot threes, and try and shoot early in the clock, if it’s open.

“We’ll have smart kids who will want to play that style. They will have fun here. Knowing this area is a huge plus. We’re going to recruit nationally. I think there are kids in this area still a great desire to play in the Big 5. The Big 10 footprint is national. That will help. I think it has to be I want to win now. We have had one guy leave since I’ve arrived.”

He wants players at Penn for the right reasons. If you provide an atmosphere that is conducive to players enjoying the journey, getting better and where they are successfully competing, he feels, they will want to stay at Penn.

It’s why it is incumbent upon McCaffery and his coaching staff, he said, not only to provide that environment, but also get his players to understand that Penn connections beyond the court can affect their future financially.

"It’s not just, ‘here’s a check,’” he said.

College basketball is more transactional today, he explained. There was a time when the mere mention of agents was taboo. Now, they’re in the living room during the recruiting process.

"If you hire an agent, what is his job, to get the most money he can get you, right?” McCaffery asked. "Now the biggest issue kids have to figure out is if you’re a star somewhere, getting big numbers, which are going to sell you, will you be in that same position somewhere else? Your agent should be able to navigate that? There are agencies out there that will take less of a cut to service their clients properly, go here for less, but at least you know what your role will be. Instead of taking the big dollars for larger programs, then you disappear, and that happens more than it should.”

In the meantime, McCaffery adroitly juggles. He works out of a bare bones office, living with a friend, and has been running ever since he was announced Penn’s head coach on March 27.

“I’m very excited about this opportunity and for this challenge,” McCaffery said. “I spoke to Steve (Donahue). I called him immediately. I saw him at the Final Four. Steve Donahue is a great coach. He will always be a part of the Penn basketball family. Penn is still part of my fabric. I bleed red and blue.

“It will just take a while to move into this office (laughs).”                   

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on BlueSky here.