‘There’s an aura to it’: Palestra memories come flooding back ahead of Big 5 doubleheader

La Salle assistant coach John Cox was looking for the right word to describe the Palestra.

His memory banks were spinning as he recalled his only game played there, and the time he saw his cousin Kobe Bryant play against Chester High, and the numerous other times he’s been to the ancient home of Philadelphia basketball.

“When you go there,” Cox explained, “whether it’s for a game or a practice, the history of it just gives it a certain type of energy. There’s an aura to it. It’s strange. Even some of our international players — they appreciate it right away.”

Cox’s father was a star player for Villanova in the 1970s, so he has a personal appreciation for the Palestra. He likes to walk around the concourse and look at the artifacts.

“I saw some things the last time I was there that I didn’t even know about,” he said. “Like seeing some of the coaches that have coached at the Palestra is amazing. Then you see stuff and say, ‘Oh wow. This game was here. And this game was here.’”

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The place is like a church.

“Yes, that’s it,” he said. “That’s the word.

“The kids get excited because of the legendary players and coaches who’ve played there. They’re on the same floor as them. All the stuff that happened here. The guys are players, but they’re also fans of the game. You get a charge out of it.”

La Salle originally was scheduled to host Wednesday’s game against Temple on campus at Tom Gola Arena when the Explorers were approached by Penn about moving the game to Penn’s campus. The Quakers already were set to host St. Joseph’s on Wednesday, so the result is now an old-fashioned Palestra doubleheader. It’s just the seventh true City Series twin bill to be played at the old building tucked away in University City.

Doubleheaders were ubiquitous during the glory years of the Big 5, but it wasn’t often that all four teams were city schools.

“It was a phenomenal experience as a player,” said Fran Dunphy, who played at La Salle and is now the head coach there. “It was a phenomenal experience as a coach just to play your games at the Palestra. It was seldom that it was four Big 5 teams in the doubleheader, but it could have been three.”

The historians, like Dunphy — who is the only person ever to coach at three of the Big 5 schools — will enjoy this. It’s just the third true Big 5 doubleheader at the Palestra since the mid-1980s.

“I hope that the younger people get a sense of how important it is,” Dunphy said.

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Ask a thousand people for their favorite Palestra memories and you’ll get a thousand different answers.

Donnie Carr, a 2,000-point scorer at La Salle and now an assistant coach there, savors cutting down the net after winning the Catholic League championship with Roman Catholic in 1996 and beating St. Joe’s in his final Palestra game in 2000.

“The sounds. The acoustics. Everything about it,” Carr said. “The atmosphere. There’s not a bad seat in the house. The fans packed in there screaming for their team. It just creates an electric atmosphere. It’s the best place to play college basketball.”

Mike Vreeswyk, one of the great shooters in Temple history, was a junior at Morrisville High when he and his buddies went to the Palestra for a doubleheader in 1984. Temple played Atlantic 10 rival George Washington in the opener. The competition was fierce, and it got the best of Owls coach John Chaney.

As the teams left the floor for halftime, Chaney had a physical altercation with GW coach Gerry Gimelstob right in front of Vreeswyk.

“I was just taking it all in. He had him by the throat,” said Vreeswyk, now 55. “I was kind of [stunned]. I didn’t know what I was seeing. I was saying to myself, ‘Wow. Is this normal? Is this what college basketball is like?’ Lo and behold later, I committed to the same coach who was strangling the opposing coach.”

Vreeswyk went 10-3 as a player at the Palestra, scored his first college points there, scored his 1,000th college point there. Said it was heaven for a shooter. The numbers back it up.

“At the risk of sounding over the top on this, it’s the perfect place to play basketball,” he said. “That’s as simple as I can put it. When they built it in the 1920s, I don’t know if they realized they were building the perfect arena. In the pure basketball sense, everything about it is perfect.”

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Vreeswyk made eight three-pointers in a 1989 game, most ever by an Owls player at the Palestra. He shot a robust 41.3% from the arc there (26-for-63), and was 39.0% everywhere else (245-for-629).

“The smells, the sounds — there’s no replication of that anywhere. And as a player actually on the court, the lighting was fantastic.”

The sounds. The acoustics. Everything about it. The atmosphere. There’s not a bad seat in the house. The fans packed in there screaming for their team. It just creates an electric atmosphere. It’s the best place to play college basketball.

There was another time when John Chaney nearly lost his mind that stands out for The Inquirer’s Mike Jensen, the dean of college basketball writers in Philadelphia.

“[He picked] up a chair, ready to give it a Knight-style court toss except his operations ace, John DiSangro, grabbed the bottom of it,” Jensen recalled. “That was right in front of us.”

Mike Kern, who retired from the Daily News in 2017, often sat near the visitors’ bench when he covered games.

“So you got a free show,” Kern said. “John Chaney. Pete Carril. I can think of others, but those stand out. You could hear every word coming out of their mouths. Talk about colorful and insightful. And sometimes they would even talk to us. Like the time Pete [the former coach at Princeton] looked at us totally exasperated by the officials and screamed with a contorted face: ‘What are they doing to me!’ Priceless.”

Columnist Marcus Hayes met Shelly Bowers, then a star at Penn, during a Sunday night pickup game in 1995. They married in 2002. Today, Dr. Shelly Hayes is the director of the Fox Chase Cancer Center Buckingham.

Marcus pointed out the Palestra’s unique ”architecture and location.”

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“At a time when most arenas resemble Quonset huts, walking along crowded university grounds in the middle of a huge city and turning to see the Palestra set back from the street like a jewel is like finding a cathedral in the favela.”

Vince Curran played for the Quakers under Dunphy, a relationship that has transitioned from player-coach to a lifelong friendship. Curran’s a radio analyst for Penn, so he’ll be at Wednesday’s doubleheader. The old building on 33rd Street is like a second home.

“The people and lifelong friendships are what have made it special to me,” he said before rattling off his quick list of fond memories.

Whew.

“There are these and so many other individual and personal memories,” Curran concluded. “All are part of the fabric of my life. None would have happened without the Palestra.”