Category: College Sports

Joe Mihalich loves coffee. Dunkin’, specifically. For years, it has been part of his morning routine: picking up a large decaf, hot, with cream, en route to a basketball arena.

Employees at his home Dunkin’, in Mt. Airy, call him by name (“Mr. Joe”). One server, in Flourtown, gave him a black beanie hat with the company’s logo stitched in, as a modest token of appreciation.

Mihalich would usually order ahead on the app, but sometimes, he’d go to the counter, and stick around for refills. He’d often do this before heading to the gym at Hofstra, where he once worked as a head coach.

It was a simple task that gave him joy. Until it wasn’t.

On Aug. 15, 2020, the former La Salle point guard was standing in his Long Island driveway, when he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke in his brain.

He underwent an emergency craniectomy; a surgery in which part of the skull is removed to relieve pressure. He came home in a wheelchair, wearing a helmet, unable to say anything but “yes” or “no.”

Mihalich was 64 years old and leading a Hofstra team that had won back-to-back CAA titles. He was on pace for 600 career wins, with likely a decade of basketball ahead. In an instant, that trajectory ceased. How can you coach if you can’t talk? If your right hand is no longer able to draw up plays?

Every routine, big and small, was disrupted. Instead of going to practice, Mihalich went to speech, physical, and occupational therapy. Those daily trips to Dunkin’ became infrequent; he couldn’t drive himself, or dictate what he wanted to drink.

Compounding this was the fact that the stroke didn’t affect his cognition. Mihalich was as sharp as he was before. He could still draw up schemes in his mind. He still preferred zone defense over man, and a four-out, one-in offense over three-out, two-in.

He just couldn’t say it. Doctors expressed skepticism that the coach would ever walk or talk at length again. The likelihood of him returning to even a modicum of independence was slim.

But Mihalich decided to throw himself into the challenge, as if he were preparing for a big game. He started working with a speech language pathologist twice a week.

He took his physical therapy seriously, so much so that he was able to go from a wheelchair to a walker, and from a walker to unassisted walking in just over a month.

He gradually began to visit his old haunts. The coach can still remember the day he went back to Dunkin’. It was 2021, in the Garden City location on 7th Street.

Mihalich walked up to the counter with trepidation. What if the attendant couldn’t understand him? What if he was holding up a line? To prepare, he memorized five words that deep down, he knew by heart: “Large decaf, hot, with cream.”

“I had to repeat it twice,” Mihalich said, “but it was OK.”

In 2021, after taking a medical leave, he returned to Hofstra as a special adviser to the athletic director so the basketball program could transition to Mihalich’s assistant, ex-Sixer Speedy Claxton.

In 2022, La Salle offered Fran Dunphy its head coaching job. He said he wouldn’t take it without Mihalich, a lifelong friend and former Explorers player with whom Dunphy had worked when both were assistant coaches in the 1980s.

Mihalich has been with the university since Dunphy brought him aboard. He’s at all of La Salle’s home games and practices, doesn’t skip a coaches’ meeting, and is always unafraid to share his thoughts.

After his day is done, typically around 6 p.m., Mihalich heads to the school’s speech therapy clinic. Those who’ve worked with him say the progress he’s made is rare, given the severity of his brain injury.

And he’s not finished yet.

“It’s kind of like, ‘You can’t do this?’“ Mihalich said. ”Well, watch me. Watch me.”

Born to be an Explorer

Mihalich was introduced to 20th and Olney at 2 weeks old. His father had gotten a job as a philosophy professor, moving the family from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia.

They lived on Chew Street in Mt. Airy, a short drive from La Salle. As a child, Mihalich spent most of his time on campus. This remained true until he graduated from the university in 1978.

Four of his six siblings were students at La Salle; so was Mary, who would become Joe’s wife, and worked as a water girl for the men’s basketball team.

Before Mihalich joined that team, he followed it religiously. The La Salle College High School student regularly attended games at the Palestra. His favorite player was Dunphy, a fellow point guard who made smart decisions and played steady defense.

Mihalich joined the Explorers in 1974 as a walk-on, receiving a basketball scholarship the following semester. After graduating, he took a coaching job at DeMatha Catholic High School in Maryland, where he served under future Hall of Famer Morgan Wootten.

In 1981, Mihalich was hired as an assistant for Lefty Ervin at La Salle. Dunphy joined him in 1985, and both men stayed on when Speedy Morris became head coach in 1986.

Together, the two young assistants worked 10- to 12-hour days out of the second floor of Hayman Hall, watching film and meeting with recruits.

They embarked on long road trips to evaluate high school players in Pittsburgh, where the Five-Star Basketball Camp was held. This gave them ample time to get to know the Pennsylvania Turnpike and each other.

Over those 300-plus mile drives, Dunphy and Mihalich mused about someday leading a Division I men’s basketball program.

“I wonder what it’s like,” Dunphy said. “I wonder what kind of pressure the head coach is under, that we’re not seeing. We had great faith in both Lefty and Speedy, when we were together.

“But also knowing that if we ever got that opportunity, we might do it our own way.”

They eventually earned their chance, hundreds of miles apart. Dunphy was named head coach at Penn in 1989, and Mihalich was hired by Niagara University in 1998.

The Mt. Airy native immersed himself in the community, going so far as to become a diehard Buffalo Bills fan. He developed a quick-paced, efficient offense, which frequently ranked among the top 75 in the country in offensive rating, according to KenPom.

But even from Western New York, Mihalich never lost touch with his roots. He’d recruit primarily from where he was born (D.C.) and where he was raised (Philadelphia), often targeting kids who were overlooked by the Big 5.

At Niagara, they flourished.

“He would develop them like crazy, from their freshman year to their senior year,” Mihalich’s former assistant Colin Curtin said. “And they would look like totally different players.”

Curtin, a former student manager for Morris at St. Joe’s Prep, has worked with Mihalich for 17 years. When the head coach left Niagara for Hofstra in 2013, he brought Curtin with him, as an assistant.

Mihalich became the second-winningest coach in the school’s history with a record of 154-102. His greatest season there was his last.

In 2020, Mihalich led Hofstra to its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2001. After winning the CAA title, he climbed high atop a ladder with a pair of scissors, making the final cut of the net.

But Hofstra never got its moment. Two days later, the tournament was canceled due to the pandemic. Five months after that, Mihalich was at home when he got a call from Mary, who was traveling to Ocean City.

He tried to speak but wasn’t able to. The line went dead. She called Curtin, who found the coach standing in his driveway.

He asked if Mihalich was alright.

“I said, ‘Shake your head, yes or no,’” Curtin recalled. “And he shook his head no.”

An unexpected homecoming

While his team embarked on remote summer workouts, Mihalich was placed on a medical leave. He connected with a local speech language pathologist, Alison Durkin, and began to meet with her in the fall.

The coach had been diagnosed with both aphasia, a language disorder, and apraxia, a motor speech disorder. He also lost some mobility on his right side, which prevented him from writing with his right hand.

Mihalich had spent the last four decades amid a symphony of sneakers and basketballs and whistles. In environments that were exciting and fast-paced and energetic.

Now, life was quiet and slow, in the most literal sense. He and Durkin started their sessions with simple, binary questions. Then, they’d count numbers, recite days of the week, and months of the year.

When Mihalich did speak, he was encouraged to over-enunciate. Buffalo Bills became “Bu-fa-lo Bills.” Niagara Falls became “Ni-ag-a-ra Falls.”

They had some initial discussions about a return to his previous role at Hofstra, but decided that was not an option.

“Not only was the job itself linguistically demanding, because you’re producing language on a stage,” Durkin said. “You’re yelling at people. You have seconds to speak. I mean — very demanding.

“And then on top of that, there’s really no reasonable accommodations that could be implemented to make that feasible. So it was definitely not an easy thing.”

Mihalich wasn’t involved in the day-to-day in his AD advisory role, and didn’t interact with players and staff; a choice he’d made himself, to ensure he wouldn’t overstep.

The coach described those years as “horrible.” He sorely missed the rhythms of his previous life. But he and Durkin kept working, unaware of whether he’d ever grace a court again.

The speech language pathologist introduced basketball terminology to keep her pupil engaged. Instead of reciting “three-pointer” or “rebound,” Durkin would have Mihalich describe exactly what those activities were.

“He knows what boxing out is,” she said, “but could he produce the language to explain it to someone who did not know? That’s a hard task.”

The exercise inadvertently set him up for an opportunity to come. In April 2022, Dunphy called Mihalich to ask if he’d be his assistant at La Salle.

Mihalich was limited in what he could say. But one word came through.

“‘Wow,’” Dunphy recalled. “And he repeated it dozens of times.”

Mihalich returned to campus that summer, with an iPad in hand, to jot down thoughts during practice. Dunphy’s staff quickly learned that they wouldn’t need to actually talk to communicate.

One of the assistant coach’s first suggestions was to implement a continuity offense, with players starting in the same spots, and flowing to different set plays.

Mihalich couldn’t vocalize this. So, he picked up a marker with his less dominant, left hand, and started scribbling on the white board in the men’s basketball office, using a language any coach could understand: Xs and Os, dotted and zigzagged lines.

Then he directed his cohorts to the gym, to demonstrate.

“And he goes, ‘Come on, upstairs! Upstairs!’” recalled former La Salle assistant coach Mike Doyle. “‘Alright, let me put my basketball shoes on.’”

If there was one aspect of the sport Mihalich emphasized less, it was defense. His teams at Hofstra and Niagara were known to run and gun. The former head coach didn’t want players expending too much of their energy by guarding an opponent.

Dunphy was much more defensive-minded. So, every now and then, Mihalich would yell “Zone!”

“And then, as soon as we’d go zone, somebody would make a three-point shot, immediately,” Dunphy said, “and I’d say, ‘All right, that’s it. That’s enough.’”

Not long after Mihalich joined the Explorers’ staff, Wendy Silverman, who ran Hofstra’s speech-language hearing clinic, reached out to La Salle on the coach’s behalf.

Mihalich began to take weekly sessions with graduate students at La Salle’s clinic, while working with Durkin remotely, on Zoom. The strategies he learned — speaking slowly, over-enunciating — he’d then bring to the court.

By the end of the 2022-23 season, staff and players could hear a marked difference.

Christine Cahill, the school’s director of academic support for student-athletes, sat next to Mihalich during practice.

“And I told him, it went from like 0 to 70%,” she said, “that first year.”

‘A reason to live’

When Dunphy retired in February 2025, Mihalich was unsure of what he would do next. He initially told Curtin that he wanted to get out of coaching.

But after Darris Nichols was hired at La Salle, his calculus changed. Mihalich had worked with Nichols’ brother, Shane, at Niagara and Hofstra. Curtin would be joining the Explorers’ staff, too.

So, Mihalich decided to give it another go, and Nichols was more than receptive. He saw the former head coach not just as a connector between generations, but someone he could learn from.

“Coming into a new program, he’s helped me navigate it,” Nichols said. “It’s great to have him around.”

Mihalich became an active participant in scouting and recruiting meetings. Just as he had with Dunphy, he started recommending offensive strategies (and of course, more zone).

His speech has progressed to the point where he can now work one-on-one with players. Last year, Mihalich developed a bond with junior guard Rob Dockery, who led La Salle in points, rebounds, and steals.

Dockery’s weakness was his jump shot. His mechanics weren’t consistent, mainly because he wasn’t practicing it enough. Throughout the offseason, the former head coach would routinely text him, reminding the guard to get back in the gym.

“Repeating that same shot, over and over again,” Dockery said. “That’s what he told me. Stick to the same shot.”

Mihalich is still going to speech therapy every week, both at La Salle and with Durkin, and the sessions can be laborious. There are moments when he needs to repeat himself one, or two, or even three times to get his point across.

“But I am here,” he said. And his life is starting to look like it once did. The former head coach wakes up every morning, and drives to the Mt. Airy Dunkin’, where he’s greeted as “Mr. Joe.”

He picks up his coffee — large decaf, hot, with cream — and brings it to the arena, leaving behind a trail of Styrofoam cups.

And for two hours, he sits and watches from his chair, as basketball chaos unfolds around him. A lesser man might see a career cut tragically short. But Mihalich sees something entirely different.

“A reason to live,” he said.