'There will never be another coach like him': Sean Miller shares personal story of late Temple icon John Chaney

In one month, it’ll be 18 years since Sean Miller sat back and couldn’t stop shaking his head and chortling at something he never saw in a basketball game until March 8, 2003. 

At the time, the Arizona Wildcats coach was an assistant under Thad Matta at Xavier and the Musketeers were hoping to put a bow on its historic season as they entered the finale with a 14-1 record in Atlantic 10 play — 23-4 overall.

Xavier faced a middle-of-the-road Temple team led by the late Hall of Fame coach John Chaney, who died last week at 89 years old. 

It was set up perfectly. It was an afternoon game at the Cintas Center in Cincinnati, Xavier retired the No. 30 jersey of three-time Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, All-American and future NBA All-Star, David West, and the Musketeers were dialed in on getting to the postseason on a positive note. 

Arizona has had its fair share of conference-clinching, can’t-lose afternoon games at McKale Center under Miller. 

“It was a magical day for us,” Miller said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday as the Wildcats get ready for their Mountain road trip. 

Xavier built up a double-digit lead, 19- or 20-point advantage, per Miller, and were on track to win with ease. 

What happened just a few minutes into the second half became the “most vivid image of Coach Chaney” for Miller. 

“He called a timeout and — I’ll never forget — walked onto the court and if you knew Coach Chaney, he has a distinct voice. I mean, it’s loud and raspy and you know it’s him from a mile away,” Miller said. “He got all three officials with the same message. And his message was — I’ll give you the PG version, it went like, ‘You have not worked in the last two hours of this game and now you’re gonna work harder than you ever have in the next two hours.’ Then he went to the second official then the third official and repeated the exact same thing to each of the three.”

Chaney returned to his team’s huddle, subbed out Temple’s starting group, installed reserve players and advised each Owl to foul Xavier the moment they crossed the half-court line. 

“I’ve never seen this before, but they fouled on every possession for the next hour-and-a-half, two hours,” said Miller. “They took a 12-minute game and a game that we were up by maybe 18 or 20 (points) … and it took two hours to play the last 15 minutes. I didn’t know the backstory of it and I just kept shaking my head, laughing and saying, ‘I cannot believe he’s going to do this all the way to the buzzer. And he did.” 

Dan Leibovitz, Chaney’s assistant coach from 1996-2006 and current SEC associate commissioner for men’s basketball, wrote a story on CoachSpeak.net days after Chaney’s passing and reminisced that afternoon in ‘03. 

“There are moments in your life when you witness greatness,” Leibovitz wrote. “Sometimes you can’t even describe it. Believe it or not, a blowout loss was one of those times for me. It’s when a light goes on in your head and it tells you – ‘that’s why this guy is a Hall of Famer.’” 

There was a method to Chaney’s madness. Eventually, Leibovitz asked Chaney if it was worth fouling Xavier once the game was out of reach. 

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According to Leibovitz, Chaney responded with, “I know what I’m doing.  I’m setting the stage for the tournament. We’re going to play this team again and next time I plan to beat them. I want them to think it will be easy.”

Xavier won 96-65, but it had to earn every single point. Chaney complimented Xavier in the postgame press conference and coined them the best team in conference history — better than the UMass team that went to the Final Four in 1996. A week later, Xavier and Temple met in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, except the second meeting resulted in the Owls upsetting the Musketeers 63-57. 

“I’ll never forget in the second game, it was as if we were playing a completely different team,” said Miller. “David had a hard time scoring and they beat us. It was just a tough game and we could never get our feet on the ground. 

“The backstory I didn’t know was he told his players and staff to ‘stay with me, this is all part of a bigger puzzle.’ What he wanted to do was build our confidence, which he did, let everyone anoint us as the greatest team ever in the Atlantic 10, which I think he said, and then he did all that to set us up with a big fat loss in the Atlantic 10 Tournament.” 

In 2004, Matta took the Ohio State vacancy and Xavier promoted Miller to head coach, where he would battle Chaney for two seasons until Temple’s icon retired in ‘06. Miller went 0-2 against Chaney. 

“There will never be another coach like him. … I’m just glad I had a chance to coach against him. He didn’t know me well and I don’t even know if he knew my name at the time I became head coach (at Xavier), but when you played Temple and you played a team that he coached, it was unlike any other game,” Miller said. 

The only other coach Miller claimed to be in the same category as Chaney is the late Georgetown icon John Thompson, who died in August. 

“When I was a freshman (at Pittsburgh), I was scared to run down the sideline he stood on. He had a booming voice and they were a lot alike,” Miller said.  

Chaney and Thompson were known for their opposing stance on Proposition 48, a rule that made freshmen ineligible, if they didn’t meet a certain grade-point average or standardized testing threshold, and only have three years of eligibility. 

"There should not be a punishment factor when there has been no crime," Chaney said in 1989. "The crime is on the youngster who is from a poor, disadvantaged background. I don't mind him sitting out. If (after his freshman year) he's matriculating towards a degree, he should be given full status, four years of competition."

Thompson boycotted two games to send a message about his annoyance with Prop 48 while Chaney continued to be outspoken. 

Chaney and Thompson were both coaches who stood up for fairness in college athletics. Two Hall of Fame coaches on and off the court that impacted college basketball across decades. They’re gone, but their legacy will never be forgotten, especially for Miller. 

“College basketball and the east misses them a lot,” Miller said.  

“They’ll forever, for me, both as a player and as a coach, have vivid imagery in my mind as two iconic people, not just coaches.”