Fran Dunphy will coach La Salle men’s basketball again in 2024-25: ‘I never really left’

Some breadcrumbs over the last two weeks made this pretty obvious, even to the untrained eyes and ears in college basketball coaching smoke signals.

First, there was a transfer portal commitment, Lower Merion’s Demetrius Lilley committing to La Salle after two seasons at Penn State. Then, a social media post on the day of the eclipse, Fran Dunphy holding his eclipse glasses up in front of his eyes, staring into the sun with athletic director Ashwin Puri behind him.

“Future so bright we need shades,” the Instagram post read.

Yes, Dunphy is returning for another season at La Salle, his 33rd season leading a Big 5 bench, the school announced Wednesday morning.

Welcome back?

“I never really left,” Dunphy said.

No, Dunphy never left, and there was no long, drawn-out process to reach this conclusion. Dunphy had mentioned the night La Salle was eliminated from the Atlantic 10 tournament in Brooklyn that he would take a few days and sit down with Puri and school president Daniel Allen and figure out the immediate future. It didn’t take long. Dunphy wanted to keep coaching, La Salle wanted him to keep coaching, and so Dunphy, a 1970 La Salle graduate, is back for a third season at his alma mater.

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And with Dan D’Antoni out at Marshall and Cliff Ellis retiring in December, Dunphy will enter the 2024-25 basketball season as college basketball’s second-oldest coach. Dunphy turns 76 in October, 61 days after Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton turns 76. Ellis retired from Coastal Carolina the day after his 78th birthday, telling The Washington Post: “I feel like I’m a general manager. I need a draft board in my office.”

Ellis, of course, was referring to the nature of the sport right now. As of Wednesday morning, more than 1,750 Division I men’s basketball players were in the transfer portal. Dunphy is no stranger to that, as seven were from his Explorers, including his top five scorers from this past season.

Why, then, at Dunphy’s age, with nothing left to prove, is he still signing up for this?

“Because it’s my alma mater, and they asked me to do this,” he said. But he’s also energized by it all. “It’s stressful to a point, but it’s also the excitement of trying to put a roster together.

“You love coaching, but you also like putting things together. And I hope we can do that.”

Lilley, a 6-foot-10 center, is the start of that. There are La Salle players in the portal who could return, too, but Dunphy’s focus right now is recruiting people to come to La Salle and help open the new John Glaser Arena. Among Dunphy’s selling points is that new arena, the chance to play right away and play big minutes — as of now, La Salle is losing 83% of its scoring and 75% of its minutes — and the competition of the Atlantic 10. La Salle also is playing a road game at North Carolina.

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La Salle was announcing Dunphy’s return Wednesday on the same day as it announced the addition of four more varsity sports: women’s rugby, women’s triathlon, women’s acrobatics and tumbling, and the return of baseball. More tuition revenue at the school will allow for a lot of things, and one of those is the reinvestment in athletics.

It’s an exciting time at La Salle, and Dunphy is happy to still be a part of it all. Besides recruiting the portal hard, Dunphy said right now he’s spending his time working out with the players La Salle does have. He also spent part of Tuesday sitting in on a lecture at La Salle’s business school given by former sports radio host Angelo Cataldi. Being on a college campus still energizes Dunphy all these years later.

But those workouts? They feel a little emptier these days.

“There’s probably a lot of workouts out there where there are more coaches than players,” Dunphy said. “We’re in an amazing time. You can’t complain about it. You just have to change with the times and try to figure out what’s best for your program.”

Dunphy, who coached 17 seasons at Penn and another 13 at Temple, hit another milestone in 2023-24, becoming the 43rd Division I men’s coach to reach 600 wins. He’ll reach yet another in 2024-25. Houston’s Kelvin Sampson will become the 33rd and Dunphy the 34th coach to reach 1,000 total games as a head coach. He wasn’t big on win No. 600, so he likely won’t be big on that one, either.

As for the future? Dunphy was asked if he was going into 2024-25 thinking it would be his last season.

“I know I’m the basketball coach at La Salle tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and we’ll figure it out as we go along,” he said. “I just want to do a good job for my school.”