In retirement, basketball lifer Fran O’Hanlon may have chosen his toughest challenge yet

The second half of a high school basketball game at Cardinal O’Hara High School was about to start last Thursday night when the PA announcer went to the microphone, hoping to correct an error he thought he had made.

“I think I forget to mention earlier our new head coach, Fran O’Hanlon,” he said.

There was little reaction to the announcement, especially not inside the O’Hara huddle, where O’Hanlon coached up his new team. O’Hara was leading Haverford School by double-digits, but O’Hanlon knew a run was coming.

This is the retirement job O’Hanlon chose. O’Hara would go on to beat Haverford to improve to 4-2, and the gauntlet that is the Philadelphia Catholic League, and the headaches that come with coaching a team expected to finish in the bottom half of the standings, awaits after the new year.

O’Hanlon retired after the 2021-22 season after leading Lafayette College for 27 years, and a life spent in basketball was winding down. He had checked all the boxes. He grew up in West Philadelphia, won a Catholic League title at now-closed St. Thomas More, played at and graduated from Villanova, played professionally overseas, coached overseas, coached at Monsignor Bonner (where he won another PCL title), coached on Fran Dunphy’s bench at Penn, and then took over a 2-25 program at Lafayette in 1995 and got the Leopards to the NCAA Tournament four years later, one of three trips they made during O’Hanlon’s tenure.

That distinguished career was rewarded with an induction in the latest Big 5 Hall of Fame class.

It was time to relax, and Avalon awaited. There would be basketball, no doubt, and O’Hanlon spent his first year of retirement visiting former assistants at their new gyms, taking in college practices, and showing up from time to time at games.

He missed the daily interaction, he said, and so when O’Hara approached him when it needed a new head coach, he turned it down but agreed to help out the new hire as an assistant. It was close enough to his Newtown Square home and felt like the perfect gig.

“I could just be the guy who sits a couple seats away and doesn’t have to be there all the time,” O’Hanlon said.

You know what they say about plans. Things didn’t work out and the Lions were left looking for a new coach. O’Hanlon didn’t turn it down a second time. At 75, he is the oldest coach in the Catholic League and one of the oldest high school coaches in the area.

Is this all just a one-year thing, or something more?

“Let’s see how this goes,” O’Hanlon said. “Let’s see if I’m the best fit for this year and in the future. I won’t be there for 27 years like I was at Lafayette.”

» READ MORE: From the archives: How Philly's O'Hanlon made his mark at Lafayette

Dunphy considers O’Hanlon one of his closest friends in basketball, but O’Hanlon has served as much more to the current La Salle coach.

“While I have tried to steal and borrow as much stuff from everybody that I ever coached with and for, I think he’s been as big an influence on my coaching career as anyone out there,” Dunphy said. “There were so many instances where I said to myself, ‘Why couldn’t I have thought of that?’

“He’s just an innovative, creative guy. His teams were always hard to play against.”

This one? It doesn’t fit that bill quite yet. The Lions have a clear top player; guard Aasim “Flash” Burton, a Rider commitment, and another Division I pledge in forward Pearse McGuinn (Stonehill), but they’re not nearly as deep as some of the teams in the top of the league.

O’Hanlon already knows how he would guard against his own team.

“If I were playing us I would be all over Flash,” he said. “I’d double him at times, scrape down on him, face-guard him when he doesn’t have the basketball.”

There’s work to do, and O’Hanlon knows it.

“I have to adjust,” he said. “Part of it is trying to get Flash open and get him shots.”

The high school game is a lot different than it was in the late 80s, the last time O’Hanlon coached in the PCL. There was no open-enrollment like there is now, and the AAU culture didn’t exist.

How do those realities impact the job?

“It’s not as fundamentally-sound as I remember it,” O’Hanlon said. “It’s hard to teach fundamentals when you’re trying to teach the whole. Before, you’d break down the parts to the whole. Now, sometimes, the parts and little details aren’t there and you’re trying to teach the whole because you’re trying to get ready for a game.”

There’s also the age gap, which is larger now for O’Hanlon than it ever was. Nearly 60 years separate the coach from his players. He’s more likely to be Fran O’Who than Fran O’Hanlon to most teens.

In some ways, O’Hanlon has picked his hardest gig for what could be his final one. It has, he admitted, been a mental grind out of the gate.

“I don’t want to say one is harder than the other, but this is a challenge,” he said. “It certainly is. They haven’t been with me, I haven’t been with them.”

» READ MORE: From the archives: Fran O'Hanlon's secret at Lafayette: Good shooters

Practice really only started in earnest about five weeks ago.

At Lafayette, O’Hanlon said, it was easier to integrate new parts. There were only a few of them to start each season, and having upperclassmen and assistant coaches who had been around meant that things flowed a lot easier.

“The challenge is I’m trying to bring everyone along,” he said.

It takes time to know one another, as the coach and his players are all learning.

Burton was benched for the beginning of a mid-December game vs. Perkiomen Valley and looked unengaged at times during a close loss. A week later, he was the best player on the court when O’Hara beat Haverford School.

O’Hanlon’s teams have always been known for their ball movement and shooting, but sometimes the best play is get the ball to Flash, who threw down a few one-handed transition dunks in the win over Haverford to go with a few assists and timely shooting.

Some recent practices, O’Hanlon said, have centered around trying to get Burton the ball in space when teams focus on denying him. The short window for real practicing has meant that sometimes O’Hanlon goes into a practice with a plan and can’t get to everything on the list because the details on the other things aren’t being perfected.

» READ MORE: Picked to finish last, La Salle has been flying high through its non-conference slate

But his Lions aced their late-game test vs. Haverford School. The Fords made the run O’Hanlon knew was coming and cut a comfortable O’Hara lead to three points with less than 30 seconds to go. O’Hara called timeout and reset itself. The Lions got the ensuing inbounds in to Burton, who created space and found an open teammate advancing ahead. The sequence ended with a three-point play and a six-point lead with 15 seconds on the clock.

A win was secured, but other games, O’Hanlon said, are coming fast. The grind is really only just beginning, and so is the hardest of O’Hanlon’s work.

“You’re trying to change a culture,” he added. “You’re trying to make things better. One of the things we said at Lafayette was: ‘Leave the day better than you found it. Leave the program better than you found it.’

“It’s not just about the X’s and O’s. You’re trying to make an impression on the student-athletes in your charge and teach them basketball.”

The game may be so different in so many ways, but that part hasn’t changed.