Duke will play Temple Friday night at the Barclays Center in the prearranged semifinals of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic. For the ninth time in their careers, Mike Krzyzewski and Fran Dunphy will scheme against each other. Dunphy is seeking a grand upset against the No. 4 Blue Devils -- which, if it happens, would notch him the second win of his career against Coach K.

College basketball's coaching fraternity begets a long line of near-royally celebrated friendships, but this one you don't hear much about. Few people realize that Dunphy is, in fact, Krzyzewski's oldest friend still in the game. And vice-versa. They go back over 40 years, to a time when the game both brought them together and kept them out of war.

"Sometimes in coaching, I think people look at somebody -- they're not on the sidelines, flamboyant, they don't call attention to themselves -- I think that's the main thing about Fran," Krzyzewski said. "Dunph doesn't call attention to himself. He called attention to his team when he was the point guard, he calls attention to his team when he's the coach. It's not about him. He's really as genuine a guy as there is in coaching. One of the outstanding coaches, but as good a guy as there is in college basketball."

It was 1971 when a 22-year-old Dunphy walked into an Army base gymnasium in San Francisco and shook hands with the first person he saw there, a coal-haired skinny guy already putting up shots on a simple basket.

Krzyzewski.

Neither knew then what would become of them. Basketball as means for a future, for either man, was no guarantee at that point; Dunphy would leave the sport altogether a few years later.

But there they were, at the Presidio, a prestigious military base sprawled in the grand shadows of the Golden Gate Bridge, two men preparing to become teammates and embark on a journey that would be one-of-a-kind and one for country.

And from it, a lifelong bond would bloom.

***

Dunphy, a Philadelphia basketball lifer and one of the true icons in that proud hoops city, has succeeded in some obscurity on the national level. He built Penn basketball into an Ivy force for more than a decade and a half, then took on the unenviable task of taking over a wobbly Temple program once another Philly hoops legend, John Chaney, finally retired in 2006. As a result, Dunphy became the first man ever to coach two Big 5 programs. He's now approaching 500 career wins and could reach his 16th NCAA Tournament this season.

"He's always been the guy that people said, ‘Well, he can't be that good,'" Krzyzewski said in reference to Dunphy's playing days. "You look at him, he's short, and now he's a little bit stockier than he was as a player, but even as a player you wouldn't think he was as quick and as crafty and as tough. But he was all those things. He was a terrific guard."

Krzyzewski's path to bona fide legend status, right there with John Wooden and Bob Knight as one of the best college basketball coaches ever, is so well-documented it's a yarn spun to frayed threads at this point.

"With Mike, the uniqueness of his character showed through; he was coaching, even then," Dunphy said. "It was unbelievable. My remembrance is his knowing the game better than the rest of us. Just as great a leader. Always positive, always making sure you knew that he was behind you."

An undersized point guard, Fran Dunphy averaged just under 19 points a game in his senior year at La Salle. (La Salle Athletics) An undersized point guard, Fran Dunphy averaged just under 19 points a game in his senior year at La Salle. (La Salle Athletics)

Krzyzewski and Dunphy's paths crossed partly because of their basketball skills but primarily because of a man named Hal Fischer. Fischer -- who had the clout of an Army colonel without technically holding the title -- coached the United States to gold medals in international play in 1951 and 1967, and recruited two of West Point's best players -- Krzyzewski and Jim Oxley -- to play for a traveling Army basketball team that was made up of active servicemen.

It went like this: The Army team would tour around the country and play other military academies: Navy, Air Force and Marines. From there, the best players from each military division would be selected for an all-star team. That group got to tour the world and play goodwill games that benefited global relations. Krzyzewski and Dunphy were part of this group, first touring the US and winning the national AAU tournament. (Quite a contrast from the AAU tournaments of today.)

"We became instant friends," Krzyzewski said. "We became very close friends because we practiced and traveled different parts of the world together."

Dunphy was a private first class rank. Krzyzewski was a lieutenant. Tucked away in the barracks, six to eight cots per room, the two would challenge each other in trivia over their hometowns, Krzyzewski claiming to know everything possible about Chicago's teams, Dunphy the same with Philly. They'd keep up on events and favorite teams with daily editions of the San Francisco Chronicle. They'd go down to the Doggie Diner on Lombard Street for dinners.

It was quite a quick come-around for Dunphy, who just a few weeks prior was worried about dying in Vietnam.

***

Dunphy, who was an excellent player at La Salle, was in his senior year in 1969-1970, when he averaged 18.6 points, 4.7 rebounds and 4.3 assists. December 1, 1969, was the day that changed hundreds of thousands of Americans' lives, including his. It was the night of the American military's first draft lottery.

It was also a night that La Salle would travel to Hofstra, win a game, and get home by bus well after midnight. Dunphy lived in an off-campus seniors apartment with two roommates. He entered, exhausted. He knew the date; everyone did. He asked his roommates if his birthday, Oct. 5, had been called. They said they weren't sure. Dunphy laid in bed, listening to the radio and awaiting the 24-hour news bulletin on which birthdays were selected as part of the draft lottery.

Failing to fall asleep, the local man on the broadcast said, "The lucky lottery winners are ... " and he ticked off dates on the calendar. Ten, 15, 20 birthdays in .... no Oct. 5. There would be 25 dates released on this initial night. The 24th date came up.

"October fifth."

And so it happened that one of the best basketball players in Big 5 history resigned himself to the fact that he'd be going to war.

In 1971, Coach K (far left) and Dunphy (far right) came together as part of a traveling military all-star team. (Courtesy of Jim Oxley)

"I remember laying in bed. I remember the guy using the word 'lucky,'" Dunphy said. "I was happy we'd won the game. I was happy (La Salle's best player) Kenny Durrett had played well. And then, 1:30 on my bed, listening to that radio ..."

After his season and college career ended, Dunphy hoped he could avoid military duty, if only he could make it as a pro player. In the summer of 1970 he tried out for the Philadelphia 76ers, in south New Jersey. He made it to the final round, but was ultimately cut. Days later, on Oct. 2, 1970, he was officially off to the Army.

Dunphy was sent to New Jersey's Fort Dix. He didn't go home on weekends, despite being relatively close, because he and his bunkmates had a habit of not keeping the barracks clean enough. Things got serious when he was eventually transferred to Fort Ord, in Monterey, Calif., where he began shooting 81-millimeter mortars in the parade fields and preparing for war at 22 years old. If he ever had to fight in Vietnam, this training might well determine whether he lived or died.

But you can't train forever, and as time drew closer, Dunphy grew with anxiety over where he'd be going. It had to be one of two places: Vietnam or Germany. He was a week out from marching papers, maybe sooner. As he killed time in the barracks one evening, someone came in. Dunphy had a phone call to take.

It was Hal Fischer. A basketball tryout was waiting for him up the coastline, in San Francisco, if he was interested.

***

Dunphy can't know for sure, but he suspects the person most responsible for his not having to go to war was Tom Gola, a La Salle legend and the best player in Philadelphia college basketball history. Gola wound up coaching La Salle during Dunphy's time. Fischer, who was looking for players who'd both played college basketball and gotten unlucky in the lottery, talked to Gola. Dunphy's name came up, and like that, an opportunity arose.

Dunphy jumped at the chance, got to San Francisco immediately, walked into a gym and saw Krzyzewski, who was already into his five-year mandatory service time as a West Point graduate. Indeed, playing hoops for a service team counted as military duty.

"I was thrilled to be out of Fort Ord and into the Presidio, having this opportunity," Dunphy said.

Fischer's office overlooked the gym, from the second floor, a small glass window allowing him to keep a constant eye on the players during the week of tryouts. Dunphy took jumpshots for three days. The excitement over the chance to play became the pressure to make the team. If he didn't, it'd be back to Fort Ord and more 81-millimeter mortars and a plane ride waiting to take him at least 6,000 miles away.

But of course, he made the team and missed out on infantry.

That all-Army team toured the country in 1971, playing the service academies, preparing for a world tour across Europe, Africa and Asia.

"[Dunph] was fun-loving, had a great, great sense of humor," Krzyzewski said of their early days together, taking bus rides across Europe and into Asia. "He's a lot more interested in what others are doing than what he's doing. He's a real good friend and really I can't say enough about him as a person. There's never been a time where I've been with Dunph that I haven't enjoyed it."

Krzyzewski (far left) and Dunphy (top right) have combined for almost 1,500 career victories. (Jim Oxley) Krzyzewski (far left) and Dunphy (top right) have combined for almost 1,500 career victories. (Jim Oxley)

When they traveled internationally, they stopped at bases in Frankfurt, Germany; Athens, Greece; Beiruit, Lebanon; and Syria, among others. They played, toured and glad-handed in places Americans could never peacefully go today, like Iran and Damascus (Syria) and Turkey. They played the armies of the world, going up against the Greeks at the site of the original Olympic Stadium, on an outdoor court with the Parthenon as the backdrop. Oxley, Krzyzewski and a few others attended lunch at an Iranian palace, dining with the Shah of Iran's brother. In Beirut, they saw a city torn to rubble after the war of '67 demolished what at the time was seen as one of the more beautiful areas in the world.

"It was beautiful, and then wrecked," Dunphy said. "That team was one of the first American military, if not citizens, to be allowed into the country since that."

The team also visited the American Embassy in Iran, the same spot that would be host to the dramatic hostage crisis that was depicted in the movie Argo in 2012.

"We actually had lunch where they held all those hostages," Oxley said.

"Little did I know the Middle East would become such a prominent piece of world history," Dunphy said. "I remember riding a bus to Damascus and playing in an arena there. It was not overly attended."

Throughout the international tour, the team didn't lose a game.

Oxley, who was the same age as Dunphy but played a year behind Krzyzewski while the two were at West Point, remembers those days fondly. All of the living members from that team remain close. How close? Dunphy was with Oxley earlier this week, attending Oxley's father-in-law's funeral in southern Jersey. Oxley, 66, spent three decades as an ER doctor, taking care of those who blasted through hospital doors dripping in blood, clutching broken bones and screaming for help. He was inducted into West Point's Athletic Hall of Fame last month.

That Armed Forces basketball team also had guys like USC's Don Crenshaw -- now a Nike executive, and Dunphy's roommate at the Presidio -- and Darnell Hillman, who went on to win the first dunk contest in ABA history and was one of the first Indiana Pacers. San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich would also be a member of the Armed Forces Basketball Team, serving as captain in 1972.

But it was Dunphy and Oxley who started in the backcourt in '71. Krzyzewski came off the bench.

"I don't know how good I was," Dunphy said.

After their time on the military team ended, Dunphy and Krzyzewski both wound up spending time at West Point, but never at the same time. Dunphy got an out from the Army as the Vietnam War was fizzling to an end. They offered him an early exit deal, he took it, and went to West Point as an enlisted man in April of 1972, his 18th month as an active serviceman. Dunphy then took an assistant coaching gig for his old high school coach, Dan Dougherty, who now is the man forgotten at Army for having this distinction: he's the guy who succeeded Bob Knight and preceded Krzyzewski, who returned to Army as head basketball coach in 1975.

A young Mike Krzyzewski and Fran Dunphy sit outside their staying quarters in Athens in 1971. (Jim Oxley)

"I have that closeness with many other coaches, but it's different for me with Mike because we were in the Army together and went through that experience together," Dunphy said. "We weren't on the front lines, fighting a foe, but there was this mutual understanding of where we were. I didn't know that I loved it when I was in it, because you're not old enough to appreciate the opportunities you have, but we were a bunch of guys thrown together, and the bonds. You can't be separated from those bonds."

Kryzyewski echoed those sentiments earlier this week.

"There was a bond there," he said, "for all of us."

While Krzyzewski and Dunphy have often spoken publicly about their time, Dunphy remembers when he wasn't so proud. When he was guilty. When he hated how he inadvertently dodged war, lived, and was lucky enough to have a life that nearly 60,000 men his age were robbed of over the course a nearly 20-year war.

In the mid 1980s, when he was an assistant at La Salle, Dunphy was in Washington, D.C. and able to visit the famed Vietnam Wall monument. He made sure he had the time. He had to see them, the 58,300 names.

"Because I could shoot jump shots I didn't have to go? How was that fair?" Dunphy said.

He went by himself, around 9 a.m. on a cold and windy January. He walked there. It was a sunny day, but damn was it cold. As he got to the memorial, the sun hit him hard at an angle. He felt warmth, and Dunphy began to cry as he looked at the names and art around him. The sun shining on him, lifting cold.

"The warmth, it was like it was 60 degrees rather than six degrees with wind chill," he said. "And it was just like those guys on the wall said to me, 'Thanks for coming. Think of us. Don't have that guilt most people have. You take advantage of your opportunity, but don't forget us.'"

He never did, never has, and in a very small way, a relationship like this privately evokes pride between two men who carry on their legacy of American military duty through the spirit of basketball.