At La Salle, former Temple hoops standout Trey Lowe found a way to keep his love of basketball

The life after basketball conversation came much sooner than Trey Lowe could have ever imagined.

His future plans were, in his mind, set in stone: play professional basketball – either in the NBA or overseas. That dream was crushed in the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 2016.

Six years later, he’s charting a new path – one that still involves hoops – as La Salle’s director of player personnel.

“I had to come to terms with everything and accept what happened. I feel like everything happens for a reason,” Lowe said. Later adding, “I just had to put my big boy pants on, take it to the chest and deal with it.”

Temple played Central Florida at noon on Saturday, Feb. 27. It was a normal gameday. Then-Temple coach Fran Dunphy had his team up early for breakfast and shootaround before squeaking out a 63-61 win over the Knights.

The Owls didn’t have another game scheduled until the following Thursday. So, Lowe asked Dunphy if he could head home to Ewing, New Jersey to have dinner with his family. To which Dunphy said, of course.

Lowe, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard at the time, added a stop at Rutgers to visit some friends. On his drive back, he fell asleep at the wheel resulting in a single-car accident. He woke up at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick surrounded by family, teammates and his coach.

Lowe was one third of a highly touted Temple recruiting class alongside Shizz Alston Jr. and Ernest Aflakpui. Dunphy, “not trying to exaggerate,” endorsed Lowe’s pro potential. His career was cut short after 28 games with upper body injuries suffered in the accident.

“I told Trey on numerous occasions that unfortunately, he has a wonderful story to tell.”

“The following year, he had this thought that he’s going to play again,” Dunphy said. “He came to practice every single day. Practice gear, sneakers, ready to go. He could do right hand layups but then he kind of worked his way out. But he sat there every single day for three years.”

It took a while for Lowe to come to terms with what happened. He didn’t like talking about it. He didn’t like hearing about it. Thinking about what happened pushed him into a deeper depressed state, mad at himself and mad at the world.

Lowe felt like he got over the final hurdle of acceptance after he graduated from Temple with his Master’s degree in 2020.

“Everybody played a part in pushing me and keeping me going,” Lowe said. “But at the end of the day, it came down to me. I feel like people can only do so much to help you get past it. If you don’t want to do it yourself it’s never going to happen.”

Conversations with his father, Dunphy and then-assistant, now Temple’s head coach Aaron McKie helped him settle on coaching as a viable next step.

Dunphy offered to help Lowe find a position somewhere after he graduated as a way to get a foot in the door. Once La Salle hired Dunphy out of retirement in April, Lowe was in his former coach’s ear pitching himself for a job. The hire became official this season.

Lowe’s job puts his hands in different areas, which he likes. Every day is a little bit different, which he really likes. A prominent part of his workload is watching game film with players and building out scouting reports. Dunphy leans on him for advice as a recent player too.

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Reaching the highest level of basketball is still Lowe’s dream, now as a coach.

Where the accident used to be a source of pain, it has since become Lowe’s driving motivation – something he thinks about every day. Sharing his journey has been another ancillary, inspiring contribution to La Salle’s coaching staff.

“I told Trey on numerous occasions that unfortunately, he has a wonderful story to tell,” McKie said. “We talk to these guys about how lucky they are to get to be student-athletes and go to college and play basketball. For him, all of that was just taken away in a blink…Trey is a great kid and he’s really going to help that program.”