Temple’s Dunphy on an NCAA losing streak

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Fran Dunphy has a career coaching resume that anyone at any level should envy. He has 419 wins. Ivy League and Atlantic 10 titles. He leads the Coaches vs. Cancer campaign. Even teaches a class at Temple.

Dunphy has accomplished so much that matters _ except lead his team into the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.

Dunphy’s failures in March are the lone black mark on a head coaching career that started at Penn in 1989.

Dunphy, in his fifth season at Temple, has the longest losing streak of any coach in the history of the NCAA tournament.

He has lost 11 straight tournament games dating back to his time coaching the Quakers. He is 0-3 with the Owls, including a loss last season as a No. 5 seed. Dunphy’s lone win with the Quakers came in 1994.

Dunphy’s NCAA tournament record is 1-12 and his .077 winning percentage is the all-time worst for a coach with at least eight games coached, according to STATS LLC.

Utah State coach Stew Morrill is 1-8. Utah State beat Boise State in the Western Athletic Conference championship game Saturday to earn the automatic bid. Morrill has lost six straight games after a first-round win over Ohio State in 2001.

Former Connecticut coach Hugh Greer also went 1-8 in the tournament from 1951-1960. Morrill and Greer’s .111 winning percentage is ahead of Dunphy.

No coach in history has lost more than seven straight tournament games.

Dunphy has a chance to snap the inglorious skid this week when he takes Temple to the tournament for the fourth straight season.

The seventh-seeded Owls (25-7) earned an at-large bid and will play No. 10 Penn State (19-14) Thursday in Tucson, Ariz., in the West region.

This was the first team in Dunphy’s 13 tournaments that was not an automatic qualifier.

The Owls are the favored seed for the second straight year, having lost to No. 12 Cornell last year. Dunphy had never started the tournament as the favorite in any of his previous appearances.

Dunphy is about as calm off the court as any coach in the game. He doesn’t lash out at his players, rip the refs or crack many one-liners at a postgame news conference. He’s quick to label himself boring.

“He doesn’t show a lot of emotion,” Temple forward Lavoy Allen said.

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