Despite hard-fought loss, Temple honors Courtney’s memory properly

Temple played first home game since assistant coach Bill Courtney’s passing, battling Florida Atlantic on Sunday. (Photo by the Philadelphia Inquirer)

By Kyle Morello (@Kylemorello4)

PHILADELPHIA — Under normal circumstances, the talk on North Broad Street right now would be about how Temple dropped two measuring stick games against two of the better teams in the American Conference after its 79-73 loss to Florida Atlantic at the Liacouras Center on Sunday afternoon.

After winning their first three conference games, the Owls have now dropped to 3-2 in league play and 11-7 overall on the season, with questions still to answer on just how high of a ceiling this team has.

But if this past week has taught us anything, it’s that there is way more to worry about than what happens on the basketball court. 

On Tuesday, Temple announced that assistant coach Bill Courtney suddenly and tragically passed away at the age of 55 years old. It was the type of news that gives you perspective on what is really important in life. 

“He’s just a great person that got to know people,” said Temple head coach Adam Fisher, who worked with Courtney at Miami before hiring him on the Owls’ staff this summer. Fisher called him “one of his closest friends,” and said he spoke to Courtney “often” in his postgame press conference on Sunday. 

Courtney was a college basketball lifer. He played his college ball at Bucknell from 1988-92, earning all-Patriot League honors in 1991 and 1992. He went on to become an assistant coach at six different universities before earning a head coaching job at Cornell in 2010 after Steve Donahue left for Boston College. After being let go there and making a stop at DePaul, he would take a spot on Jim Larranaga’s staff at Miami in 2019, where he joined Fisher as an assistant. Courtney stayed in Coral Gables until the end of last season, where he became the interim head coach after Larranaga’s retirement in December of 2024.

“The guy never had a bad day,” Fisher said. “(He) kept everybody positive, upbeat. And a lot of people have said to me this week, ‘BC was a good friend,’ and it’s the truth. Because everybody he came in contact with, he got to know personally. And in this new world of transactional recruiting and NIL and transfer portal, he was old-school. He was going to build relationships, and he was just an incredible person.”

Fisher’s Temple team had a game in Memphis just over a day after the news of Courtney’s passing, but decided to play anyway.

“They thought that’s what Bill Courtney would want, and I know that’s what Bill would want,” Fisher said. “His mom told me that’s what he would have wanted.”

The Owls had a chance to win that one at the buzzer, but ultimately fell short in a 55-53 loss on Wednesday. It was a valiant effort on the court in most circumstances, and a courageous effort knowing the unimaginable news they received a day earlier. 

Both games were affairs from which the Owls could have walked away victorious. Temple led against FAU for over 26 minutes on Sunday, and got a combined 69 points from Aiden Tobiason, Derrian Ford and Gavin Griffiths. Still, it wasn’t enough to hold off the visiting Owls, fueled by an outstanding second half from freshman Josiah Parker, who had 19 points and 10 rebounds in the final frame alone. 

Temple will have an opportunity to bounce back and stack more wins in league play this coming week. They’ll face another group of Owls, Rice, on Wednesday, before traveling to San Antonio to take on UTSA Saturday. A pair of wins against those opponents would get Temple to 5-2 in conference play and help mitigate its two close defeats this week. The results may be disappointing to some, but that’s not how Fisher thinks his late friend would have seen it.

“I know the results haven’t gone our way this week,” he said, “but I do know he’d be proud of how we competed and how hard we played.”