Temple's Chaney never one to take the easy road
"When people say our schedule is too tough, I can't argue," Bradshaw says. "It really is. I looked at our schedule this year and said, 'Coach, why aren't (NBA teams) San Antonio and Sacramento on it?' He says they weren't available."
Chaney was probably joking, but it's hard to tell. His 2004-05 schedule is funny enough as it is. Temple lost 2,000-point scorer David Hawkins, who accounted for 37.5 percent of the team's offense last season, and Chaney scheduled three Final Four contenders from the ACC: Wake Forest, Duke and Maryland. Only Wake Forest comes to Philly.
The Owls also visit an Elite Eight team from a year ago, Alabama, and play 2004 NCAA Tournament teams South Carolina and Princeton. And Big Five games against Penn and Villanova. Oh, and Chaney also agreed to go to Georgetown to be new Hoyas coach John Thompson III's first opponent.
Chaney has done this before -- like, every season. In 2002-03, the Owls famously played six consecutive non-conference road games: at Wake Forest, South Carolina, Charlotte, Penn, Penn State and Illinois. They went 1-5.
"That was my first year here," says Bradshaw, previously at DePaul. "I said, 'That's just murder.' We started that season 2-8, and it almost seemed like Houdini being shackled in the war chest and thrown into the water with too many locks, too many chains -- and he somehow got out."
That's debatable. Temple rallied from its 2-8 start to win 18 games and reach the NIT, but that's where Chaney's scheduling technique raises a pertinent question: With a few more easy wins, would the Owls have reached the 2003 NCAA Tournament?
After 12 consecutive NCAA appearances, Temple has gone to the NIT each of the past three seasons. The Owls' record entering A-10 play in those three seasons: 3-8, 2-8 and 4-5.
Chaney dismisses the connection. Without all those tough games in November and December, he's not sure his team would have been hardened enough to win in January and February. Besides, he says, "I can't change now -- this is how I do it."
This is one impossibly stubborn man. No one schedules like Chaney, and it's possible that no one disciplines like him, either. He routinely suspends players for discretions like a missed class or a missed study hall. In other programs, the punishment would be extra running. Under Chaney, they don't play.
That, too, has cost the Owls. Last season, the Temple bus was about to leave for a game at Rutgers when he asked the team's academic coordinator how the week had gone. Not great, the coordinator said. Forward Michael Blackshear, the team's leading rebounder, had missed a class.
Chaney kicked Blackshear off the bus.
Temple went 3-3 without Blackshear -- losing at Rutgers, Arizona State and Miami by a combined 20 points. Were those three losses the difference in Temple's eventual 15-win NIT resume and an 18-win NCAA Tournament bid? Possibly.
"Some coaches say, 'I can't suspend my best player -- I won't get another one,'" Bradshaw says. "Coach has flied in the faced of the soft traditional way. Has he lost games because of it? Yes. Has he lost players because of it? Yes. Has he lost spots in the NCAA Tournament? Yes.
"But when you look at Coach Chaney, you take the whole coach there. He's had 21 straight winning years. He's got a method to what people might call madness."
