Philadelphia U.'s Herb Magee closing in on 1,000th win

What does it take to win 1,000 college basketball games?

Philadelphia University's Herb Magee, already a basketball Hall of Famer - the guy who went to college on Henry Avenue 51/2 decades ago and never left - needs one more to join Duke's Mike Krzyzewski as the only NCAA men's coaches at all levels to win 1,000 times. Krzyzewski got to the number on Jan. 25.

"It's staggering," said University of the Sciences coach Dave Pauley of the win total. "Twenty wins a year for 50 years. He's coached through different eras - at one school. You realize how powerful that is, and how important that is?"

What does it take? Start with some street smarts. Magee, 73, grew up at 45th and Baltimore. His mother died when he was 12 and his father passed away a year later. Magee and his brothers were raised from there by their uncle, a priest. Herb stayed on course, even if it occasionally took scaling a back wall at Convention Hall to see the Warriors play ball.

Deemed a couple of inches shy of Big Five-worthy out of West Catholic High, Magee took his wiles and his self-taught shooting stroke to Philadelphia Textile and set the gym on fire, scoring 2,235 points, averaging more than 24 points a game for his career, mostly on jump shots in the days before the three-point line.

His craftiness translated to coaching. Michigan coach John Beilein, once a Magee Division II rival at Le Moyne College, saw it from right behind Textile's bench when he sat scouting his coming opponent at another school in upstate New York. Beilein didn't just scribble down all of Magee's plays.

"I'm on their calls," Beilein said in a telephone interview from Ann Arbor. "We spend an hour and a half practicing."

It was all wasted time, Beilein said.

"They didn't run one play they ran the other night," Beilein said. "He ran counters to those plays. He looked down at me and it was almost like he was winking at me - in his sweat suit, by the way."

Holy Family coach R.C. Kehoe was spot-on, talking in the front row across from Magee's bench as he scouted a recent Philadelphia University game: "He really hasn't changed since he was coaching against my dad's good friends."

The school changed names but Magee didn't, wearing his khakis and school-issued golf shirt while all his assistants wear suits.

"People can see the game the way it ought to be played, and also a little reach back to how it was played," Pauley said of his school's top rival.

That's not to say Magee didn't produce wrinkles. His wrinkles have wrinkles.

Magee would put in an offense with a guy coming up to receive the ball, then add a backdoor cut, just an option to run sometimes as a counter. Then maybe add another counter to the counter.

"That type of by-the-seat-of-your-pants coaching has been a trademark of his teams," said Dick DeLaney, who assisted Magee, then coached against him while at West Chester for 21 seasons, then retired only to later rejoin Magee's staff for a couple of seasons.

"With a Herb Magee team, you have to think about 30 different sets," said Chuck Hammond, a former assistant, now the head coach at Goldey-Beacom in Wilmington.

A former backcourt partner, Butch Iancale, also once pointed out that Magee has a photographic memory. "Believe me, never say anything to him you want him to forget."

Hardly last on the list, Magee produces teams that can shoot. In his sport, he is considered a premier shooting instructor, maybe the premier shooting instructor, teaching NBA players and generations of local boys and girls his simple techniques, reminding them to shoot through the guide hand and follow through: "Look at where your hands are. They'll tell you the story."

Another favorite Magee bit of advice: "Don't follow your shot, make your shot."

From the start, Magee knew what worked and what didn't for himself and buddies Jim Lynam and Jim Boyle on the playgrounds and at West Catholic.

He also knew you have to believe in yourself. That goes to the top of the list. Magee will call former assistants who maybe hit a rough patch and stress it: "You've got to believe in yourself. You've got to have confidence."

Hammond, who received one of those calls earlier this season, had his path charted in high school, routed through Magee.

Hammond played for a former Magee player in high school, Lou Abistista, at Paul VI. As a senior in high school, Hammond thought about playing at Rowan, since he had been a regular at John Giannini's camps there. Giannini, now La Salle's coach, knew Hammond ultimately wanted to get into coaching.

"To be perfectly honest, you're going to be on my team, but you're not going to play," Hammond remembers Giannini telling him. "If you want to get into coaching, you should really go to Philadelphia Textile."

Giannini made a phone call, Hammond said, and he wound up being a manager for Magee and then an assistant before going to Goldey-Beacom in 2003.

Former Magee assistants, now running their own programs, joke about how they'll hear themselves say "Relax," and know where it came from.

Magee proteges include top high school coaches over the years in Pennsylvania and South Jersey. Among the schools that hired a former Magee assistant to be a head coach: Boston College, Cornell, West Chester, Widener, Delaware Valley and Chestnut Hill. Current Penn State coach Pat Chambers played point guard for Magee.

His teams have beaten 41 schools in Pennsylvania alone.

Magee couldn't have been one of the coaches who constantly adapts to opponents. He'd never be closing in on 1,000. He coached against an ever-changing cast of opponents. His teams were sometimes independent or they played in the Mideast Collegiate Conference or the New York Collegiate Athletic Conference, now the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference.

When Philadelphia Textile won the NCAA College Division national title in 1969-70, Magee's Rams opened up with a five-point loss at Villanova. That same Villanova team made the third round of the NCAA tournament and went to the NCAA title game against UCLA the following season.

Game No. 2 that year, Textile won at Drexel by 25 points.

Magee mentions John Chaney as a great coaching rival, and he was talking about the John Chaney at Cheyney State before Chaney's Temple days.

Through it all, Magee's team stayed recognizable. Take Win 996, on Jan. 19. Just over six minutes in, one of Magee's starters picked up his second foul.

Standing there, Magee didn't look at anyone on the bench and no one on the bench looked at him. No flickering thoughts from his assistants that maybe Derek Johnson should take a break. Everyone involved in any of Magee's previous 995 wins knows the requirements to play for this man: You need big lungs or a long butt.

Starters play and subs sit, and if you have a differing opinion on how it can be done, that's fine. But you're not going to sway Herb.

Johnson played 38 minutes and never picked up his third foul. The starters all were in for at least 32 minutes of an 82-60 victory over Dominican College of New York. A sixth man got 13 minutes. Five more reserves got either a minute or two at the end.

"When I went back with him the second time, I was in his ear, maybe we can get this guy in," DeLaney said. "He was like, 'No, no, relax, I don't play a lot of guys, don't you remember?' "

Another of Magee's traits, according to DeLaney: "He can let a play go. A lot of coaches, if they get ticked off at an official or a call, they miss the next three plays. He lets it go. And he lets games go. I wish I could have done it better. He lets it go."

Magee knows what he likes in a player. Remember, he isn't getting Division I stars. "He has a great eye," DeLaney said. "We were at some games together. I spot a kid. I'm sitting on pins and needles - does Herb like him yet? He might say, 'That kid can really play.' "

Or . . .

"He'd get in the car: 'There's something about the kid I don't like. He screws around with the ball too much.' "

This all adds up to 1,000 according to the men who faced him.

"When I first got a Division I job at Canisius . . . at the Final Four, he wanted to grab something to eat," Beilein said. "I tried to barb him a little bit, get into him. I said, 'I'm looking for more like a Division I guy to go eat with.' He said, 'It's funny, I've been looking for somebody with 700 wins and I can't find anyone.' "

Beilein still laughs about it.

"He put me right in my place," Michigan's coach said. "That was 300 wins ago."

The top 10 coaches on the NCAA's all-division men's basketball victories list:

Coach   Schools   Wins   

Mike Krzyzewski*   Duke, Army   1,001

Herb Magee*   Philadelphia University   999

Jim Boeheim*   Syracuse   962

Don Meyer   Hamline, Lipscomb,   923

Northern State

Bob Knight   Army, Indiana, Texas Tech   902

Dean Smith   North Carolina   879

Adolph Rupp   Kentucky   876

Jim Calhoun   Northeastern, Connecticut   866

Glenn Robinson   Franklin & Marshall   833

Jim Phelan   Mount St. Mary's   830

*–active

EndText

@jensenoffcampus