They're falling around him, flameouts and burnouts, but the old man hangs on, surveying the Atlantic 10 with those ancient eyes, wondering what exactly to make of it all.
"I don't know what's going on," says Temple's John Chaney, who signed a three-year contract extension that will take the soon-to-be 70-year-old through the 2003-04 season. "All of us are either successful or victims of our own philosophy."
Seven teams in the Atlantic 10 will enter the 2001-02 season with a different coach than the one who closed out 2000-01. Only two of the changes are of the upwardly mobile variety, St. Bonaventure's losing Jim Baron to Rhode Island, and Xavier losing Skip Prosser to Wake Forest.
|  | | Chaney has too much passion for the game to stop coaching even as he reaches age 70. |
The rest -- typical college basketball ugliness. Firings, forced resignations, weariness. One or more of those were the reasons behind the changes at Duquesne (Danny Nee replaces Darelle Porter), George Washington (Karl Hobbs for Tom Penders), La Salle (Billy Hahn for Speedy Morris), Massachusetts (Steve Lappas for Bruiser Flint) and Rhode Island (Baron for Jerry DeGregorio).
Outlasting them all is the oldest of them all, Chaney, who will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in October, then turns 70 three months later. This will be his 20th season at Temple, his 30th as a college coach, and he says he's the same John Chaney who likes to sit under a tree with a bag of peanuts and a beer, or play tennis with "the old guys, and the old guys tell me I'm going in the Hall of Shame."
"I've always been the same guy, all my years," Chaney says. "I've been excited about what I do. I've always been energized by the kind of people I'm around, not necessarily talented people, but players who listen and work hard."
The energy could run out quickly, though. Chaney has grown more and more disillusioned with certain fringe elements of college basketball -- the summer-time leeches, the talking heads -- and wonders when enough will be enough.
"What might make me decide to quit this business is if there are too many changes, and I find I'm too old to adapt," Chaney says. "I'd quit if that should happen."
For now, Chaney must adapt to the changing face of the Atlantic 10, where he has to familiarize himself not only with new coaching styles at seven leagues schools, but also learn about new member Richmond, whose arrival this season will split the 12-team league into two divisions.
All of the new coaches, Chaney knows. Baron, for example, is staying within the league, but gets a recruiting upgrade. Still, a new coach for an old foe means new headaches.
"You look at their games from where they came from before, and see if there's any kind of pattern," Chaney says. "I don't know what kind of change I'll have to make. I'll probably have to think a lot on my feet."
Chaney nimbly guided the undermanned Owls to within one game of his first Final Four appearance this past March, an unlikely run that began with Temple 14-12 and barely on the NCAA tournament radar, at which point the Owls won 10 straight games, including the Atlantic 10 tournament title.
Every key player but wing Quincy Wadley returns for Temple (24-13), including high-scoring point guard Lynn Greer and rebounding maven Kevin Lyde, who considered entering the NBA draft. Four freshmen will join the mix, including the one who probably will replace Wadley in the lineup, 6-foot-4 Nile Murry from Houston. "We're hoping he can come in and help us immediately," says Chaney.
At his age and with so many key seniors -- Greer, Lyde, Alex Wesby and Ron Rollerson -- this could be Chaney's last chance at making another Final Four run. But he doesn't talk about wanting to go out a winner. If anything, Chaney sounds like a man who will leave the game only when it appears the game has left him.
"If the players decide they don't want to listen any more or play hard or give the energy or effort, that's the day I'm out of there," he says. "You'll know that day has come if you see a mule parked at a fire hydrant outside the Liacouras Center. I'll come out with an 'El Tabasco' hat on and a Jack Russell dog, and both of us will get on the mule and ride into sunset."
St. Joe's loaded
Last season they were cute and underrated. This season, the Hawks could be plain old nasty.
St. Joseph's brings back almost every key player from its 26-7 team, and that's likely to include wing forward Na'im Crenshaw, who was listed last season as a senior but, since his days as a freshman non-qualifier, has academically re-claimed that fourth year of eligibility.
The Hawks already had one of the best backcourts in the country coming back in Jameer Nelson and Marvin O'Connor, and an exquisite-shooting power forward in Bill Phillips.
To all of that, add a three-person recruiting class headed by Washington D.C.-area player of the year Delonte West, plus redshirted forward John Bryant, plus a pair of returning big men gaining valuable international experience this summer: 6-9 Canadian Damian Reid (9 points, 6.5 rebounds per game) and 7-1 Russian Alexandre Sazonov (4.9 points, two blocks per game).
Hawks coach Phil Martelli is sitting on a potential Final Four team if everyone stays healthy and on the same page, and his big men produce.
"I think Damian and Alex, that combination, is the key," Martelli says. "I'd like to see both of them step up and become stars. (They) are two guys who can take it up another level in their conditioning, skill level and low-post presence."
Gregg Doyel covers college basketball for The Charlotte Observer and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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