Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Jan. 10, 1991, edition 2 / Page 15
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BOOKS Photo courtesy of Temple University "Winning /? an Attitude cele brates the gradual climb of the Temple Owls with descriptions of players and the facinating evolution of a team that has become a true force in major college basket ball." Few sctorts have as enthusiastic a following as college basketbalf and few cities love their basketball more than Philadelphia. At the forefront of the long basketball tradi tion in Philadelphia is Temple University and its charas matic coach.John Chaney" In Winning Is An Attitude (St. Martin's Press, $18.95), Steve Wartenberg, af 'Correspondent Tor the PhUadelpJua Inquirer and New York Times, brings the revered Owls and their coach one step closer with an inside look at their entire 1989-90 season. Chaney, who spent 10 years as head coach of Cheyney State, is regarded as one of the top coaches in all of college basketball- He's one of the few coaches who have moved from a black college to a major Division 1 school in his career. Chaney was also a brilliant player at Bethune-Cook man College, where he was an All-American during his playing days. Winning Is An Attitude celebrates the gradual climb of the Temple Owls with descriptions of players and the fasci nating evolution of a team that has become a true force in major college basketball. When Chaney joined the Owls in 1982, they were a losing squad that hadn't participated in the NCAA playoffs since 1958. Under Chancy's direction, the Owls made it to the NCAA the very next year. In the 1989-90 season, Temple, led by Mark Macon and Duanc Causwell, were ranked No. 1 by two major college basket ball polls. Wartenberg follows the Owls throughout last season, covering their infamoys 5:30 a.m. practices, Chancy's enlightening talks and modern day parables, along with actual play-by-play scenes from their most exciting games. He' captures the early in-fighting that took place between the players plus the evolution of some of the team's more awkward members (Ramon Rivas and Mik Kilgorc) into confident players who learned to drastically minimize their mental mistakes, Wartenberg brings to light the pivotal points in Tern pie's season, including ?auswell's academic suspension, Macon's brilliant performances, Chaney's beef with the NCAA over Proposition 48, and the Owls appearing in the ?90 NCAA playoffs. j Winning Is An Altitude is not only the story of John Chaney's basketball team, but also a story of the man him self ? his early years as a starter for Ben Franklin High School in Philadelphia; the Haddington Summer Basketball League when he played with a shy, 7-0 junior high school kid named Wilt Chamberlain; and his successful coaching career. Most importantly, Winning Is An Attitude chronicles the poor neighborhood couits wheie Chancy learned the~ street-fighting style of basketball, along with his college * experiences at Bethune-Cookman, which led Chaney to believe that education i^ only way out for underprivileged - kids. "If you could go into any poor family ..... and take one kid out of there and get that kid through college, you would raise the aspiration level of everybody in that fami ly," the coach says. Chaney teaches his players that education is the way to become a winner. His motto: "Winning Is An Attitude" (seen on billboards, posters and bumper stickers throughout Philly), applies to life as well as basketball. Winning Is An Attitude highlights coach Chaney's con troversial stand of Propositions 42 and 4$, the NCAA rules that dictate that all players must have an SAT score of 700 or better plus a cumulative GPA of 2.0, in order to be eligi ble for an athletic scholarship and playing time. A staunch opponent of those rules since Prop 48 took effect in 1986, Chaney has continued to speak out in heated debates about those measures and 1991 should be no exception. "Prop 48," the coach points out, "was like pun ishing a youngster because he hadn't had the opportunity for a quality education." -Donald Hunt I
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Jan. 10, 1991, edition 2
15
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