Run This Town

The old Juan Fernandez is back, according to coach Fran Dunphy.

After scoring in double digits just twice after suffering concussion-like symptoms at Fordham on Jan. 23, Fernandez showed the type of offensive explosiveness he brings to the Temple roster by scoring 23 points on 7-11 shooting from behind the three-point line as the No. 20 Owls defeated La Salle 65-53 Sunday afternoon at the Tom Gola Arena.

“He’s gotten better over the last two weeks,“ Dunphy said. “The first couple of weeks he was hurting. We kept asking him how felt. He was a shell of himself the past four games. The process ended and now the old Juan Fernandez is back and certainly he was terrific today.”

Fernandez missed just one game due to the injury but definitely showed some signs of the bump he received on his head last month. Fernandez shot just 16-49 from the field up to today’s contest.

“They told me it was a day-by-day thing every day,” he said. “It was a process definitely and everybody helped me. The doctors were great with me and [head trainer] Steve Spiro was there for me every time I needed him. Everybody helped me a lot especially in giving me confidence.

“I was confident and everybody gave me their confidence in trying to get me back as soon as possible. This was the first time I had an injury like that and I just tried to forget about it and move on.”

Fernandez matched his career-high with seven three-pointers, a feat he accomplished in December when the Owls upset then No. 3 Villanova 75-65. The sophomore guard scored a career-high 33 points on 11-15 shooting.

“My teammates looked for me and I knew we were going to need to make shots,” Fernandez said. “I think the key was there when we started the second half. We got the lead and we knew we didn’t have to let them back in the game.”

With the wins over La Salle and Villanova, plus victories over Saint Joseph’s and Pennsylvania, the Owls recorded their fifth 4-0 Big 5 season and their 26th Big 5 crown in school history.

“I means a lot,” junior forward Lavoy Allen said. “Not only to us but to our school, our alumni and the Big 5 is a great tradition and it was really big for us to win it.”

“It’s a big deal for me,” Dunphy said. “I think it’s a big deal for Temple, for Temple basketball. From a personal standpoint, to be declared a champion of the Big 5 is very important. It may not hit them right away, but in five years, 10 years, 20 years, that’s bragging rights I think they will appreciate greatly.”

Temple (24-5, 12-2 Atlantic Ten Conference) and La Salle matched up nearly a month ago with the Owls winning 64-52 at the Liacouras Center behind 14 points from sophomore guard Ramone Moore. Sophomore forward Micheal Eric scored what was then a career-high 13 points on 6-9 shooting. The loss started a current eight game losing streak for the Explorers (11-17, 3-11 A-10).

Senior guard Luis Guzman opened the scoring with a three-pointer from the corner and Eric went on to score six straight points as the Owls went up 13-4.

La Salle responded with seven straight points and a 13-5 run of their own to tie the game at 19. Senior guard Rodney Green had six points during the run and finished the first half with 12 points and four assists.

Allen had a strong first 20 minutes of his own. Late in the first half, Allen scored seven straight points for Owls capped off by a three-pointer from the top of the key which put Temple up by three. Allen finished the first half with nine points and 12 rebounds (seven offensive).

Junior forward Jerrell Williams capped a strong first half for the Explorers with an alley-oop lay-in off a pass from Green as time expired. La Salle shot 50 percent from the field in the first half and entered halftime with a 33-32 lead.

The Owls shot only 35 percent from the field in the first half and were outscored 22-8 in the paint.

“I think it’s happened a number of times to us this season,” Dunphy said. “I was hoping it was going to happen to us today and it certainly did but we’ve been very lucky throughout the year with those kinds of performances of guys stepping up and delivering when we needed them to.”

The second half was a different story as the Owls came out firing. Temple scored the first 18 points highlighted by four triples from Juan Fernandez which put them up 50-33.

Allen added four points during the run and finished the game with 17 points and a career-high 21 rebounds, with nine coming on the offensive board. Allen’s rebounds are the most by a Temple player since Joe Newman pulled down 24 against Drexel on Feb. 5, 1973.

“The main thing is being aggressive,” Allen said. “[La Salle] is a great rebounding team so that’s one of the important things is keeping them off the backboard and that’s what I tried to do.”

“Lavoy is as good a rebounder as maybe [anyone] in the country,” Dunphy added. “He’s a terrific rebounded; he knows where to go. His defensive positioning is extraordinary, I’ve said that all along. He seldom makes a mistake on the defensive end in terms of his positioning. He has great hands, great positioning and he knows what he’s doing out there.

However, the Explorers bounced back from that big blow and responded with a 10-0 run to cut the game to single digits.

Green paced the Explorers scoring 21 points on 10-23 shooting while adding six assists. Williams added 17 points with five rebounds.

But that was the closest La Salle would get as the Owls won their fifth game in a row which ties them with Xavier atop the Atlantic Ten Conference. The win also earns Temple a bye in the upcoming Atlantic Ten Tournament in Atlantic City, N.J. from March 12-14.

“Coach every game says that every game is one step along the way and that’s how we take every game,” Fernandez said. “In this league it’s very hard to play on the road, especially Big 5 games and we have to be prepared. We made a name for ourselves and everybody wants to beat us. We just have to be focused.”

Temple has two games remaining in the regular season: Wednesday at Saint Louis and Saturday against George Washington, which is Senior Day at the Liacouras Center.

Pete Dorchak can be reached at pdorchak@temple.edu.

Defensive effort downs Dayton

For the first time since the Penn State game Dec. 5, the men’s basketball team failed to break 50 points.

But like that game, Temple found a way to win, as the Owls defeated Dayton, 49-41.

The Owls improved to 23-5 overall and 11-2 in the Atlantic Ten Conference. The Flyers dropped to 18-9 overall and 7-6 in the A-10.

It was Dayton’s lowest point total since a 59-38 loss to George Washington on Jan. 18, 1997. Entering the game, the Flyers averaged 70.3 points per game.

For Temple, the win marked the eighth time this season the Owls have held an opposing team 20 points or more below its scoring average. The Owls held the Flyers to 26.8 percent shooting from the field for the game, the lowest field-goal percentage by a Temple opponent this season.

“I know it didn’t look pretty from an offensive standpoint, for either team,” coach Fran Dunphy said. “I’ll wait and make a judgment about how well we were defensively until after I see the film, but I thought Dayton really guarded us hard and got in our face and made it really hard for us to run any offense.”

Neither team could buy a basket in the first half. Dayton shot 16.1 percent from the field and connected on just 5 of its 31 shot attempts. Temple did not fare much better, making just four more shots in as many attempts to lead, 19-13, at halftime. The Owls and the Flyers were deadlocked in the rebounding column at 24 all, and each team’s leading scorer – junior forward Lavoy Allen for Temple and junior forward Chris Wright for Dayton – had six points. Allen had pulled in 10 rebounds in the first 20 minutes, however, and finished just shy of a double-double with nine points and 17 rebounds.

“I thought Dayton had a lot of opportunities in the first half that just didn’t go,” Dunphy said, “and I thought we did, too. I thought both teams were really missing an ingredient in terms of finishing at the rim.”

“I think it started off with a lot of missed layups on both sides,” Allen said. “Everyone was missing. It wasn’t just one or two guys. I don’t know what it was. It was just the way the game went.

“At the end, it was very physical,” Allen added. “They wouldn’t let us run our sets, so we tried to get stops at the end. It was a very physical game.”

Temple opened the second half on a 14-9 run to build an 11-point lead – its largest of the game – with 13 minutes, 22 seconds remaining.

But Dayton would gradually chip away at the Owls’ lead. Normally reliable free-throw shooters like senior guard Ryan Brooks and sophomore guard Juan Fernandez – who shoot 80.2 percent and 85.5 percent from the foul line, respectively – each missed a foul shot later in the second half. As a team, the Owls shot 61.9 percent from the free-throw line.

“We obviously got ourselves to the [foul] line in the second half, but we didn’t shoot it great at the foul line,” Dunphy said. “It seemed like every time we went, we went 1-for-2.”

And those misses, along with a few timely late 3-pointers from Dayton senior guard Rob Lowery, got the Flyers to within four points with 39.9 seconds left.

Temple travels to La Salle for its next game, a 2 p.m. tipoff at Tom Gola Arena Sunday. The Owls would clinch the Big 5 title with a win.

Game Notes: Sophomore guard Ramone Moore led both teams with 13 points. He has now led Temple in scoring six of the last seven games…Senior guard Luis Guzman tied a career high in assists with seven. He also did not commit a turnover for the third straight game…Dayton was 12-0 this season when it held an opponent below 60 points…The Flyers were also 15-4 when outrebounding an opponent. They outrebounded the Owls 45-42…Dayton had won the last three meetings against Temple before tonight’s win…Dayton has not beaten a Top 25 team on the road since Dec. 8, 2007 versus then- No. 11 Louisville.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.

Owls outlast Saint Joseph’s in overtime

The last time out against Saint Joseph’s, Temple dominated inside with 33 combined points from junior forward Lavoy Allen and sophomore forward/center Micheal Eric.

The Owls’ inside presence outscored St. Joe’s 42-18 in the paint Saturday at the Palestra and connected on 13 second-chance points compared to the Hawks’ zero, but the No. 21-ranked men’s basketball team looked to someone else for its seventh straight win against St. Joe’s.

Sophomore guard Ramone Moore scored 13 points in the first half, which led both squads, and finished with a career-high 24 points and a season-high nine rebounds in the 75-67 overtime win, which counted in the Big 5 standings. Moore broke his previous career-high of 18 points, which he set in Temple’s win at St. Bonaventure last Wednesday, on the bucket that sent the game into overtime.

With 5 seconds remaining in the game, St. Joe’s senior guard Garrett Williamson converted a layup to give the Hawks a 59-57 lead.

But then Moore caught the inbounds pass from Allen and sped up the floor. He made his own layup with 1.5 seconds left to tie it.

“I thought that when Lavoy took the ball out that Juan [Fernandez] was overplayed, so I tried to get open so he could get me the ball,” Moore said. “I thought I had enough time to go the length of the court, and it was a great play. I was just thinking I was going to go straight to the rim and tie the game.”

“My first initial look was Juan,” Allen said, “but he was being covered. I saw ‘Mone standing at halfcourt, so I just threw him the ball. It was a great inbounds pass, by the way.”

Coach Fran Dunphy admitted that prior to the play he considered calling a timeout.

“I choked it back a couple of times,” Dunphy said. “It was a great individual effort [by Moore]. Lavoy saw Ramone, and Ramone had enough presence of mind to take it to the rim.”

“I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but he wasn’t in the scouting report the first time,” St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli said. “He just wasn’t in there. Now, Moore has a scorer’s mentality.”

Temple improves to 22-5 overall and 10-2 in the Atlantic Ten Conference, while St. Joe’s drops to 9-18 overall and 3-10 in the conference. The Hawks have now lost four games in a row and seven of their last eight. Temple needs one more win in the Big 5 to claim the city series title. The Owls face La Salle next Sunday at Tom Gola Arena.

Temple’s inside duo started the game off strong. Eric blocked St. Joe’s first attempted shot, and he and Allen scored six of the team’s first 12 points. Allen finished with his 10th double-double of the season with 16 points and 10 rebounds, but he did not pick up his scoring until the second half and overtime, when he scored 10 of them. His dunk and free throw in overtime gave the Owls a five-point cushion at 69-64.

Senior guard Ryan Brooks had two points at halftime, when the Owls led, 29-23. He finished with 12. With the Owls trailing by two points, 52-50, and 1:52 left in regulation, Brooks hit a 3-pointer for his first points of the second half and Temple’s first 3 of the game. About a minute and a half later, Brooks went in for a layup that tied the game at 57-57 before Williamson and Moore traded buckets to send the game into overtime.

Game Notes: This was the 150th career meeting between the two universities and the first overtime meeting since March 5, 2002. With Saturday’s win, Temple improves to 5-4 in overtime games against the Hawks…Temple’s longest winning streak in the series is 10 games, from 1996 through 2000…Moore started again for sophomore guard Juan Fernandez, who finished with 13 points on 3-of-12 shooting from the field in 33 minutes of action. Fernandez started the scoring in overtime with a 3-pointer…“Whatever coach Dunphy decides to do [about who is starting], I’m happy with that,” Moore said. “To me, it doesn’t matter who starts,” Dunphy said. “It matters who’s in there at crunch time, and we went with four guards down the stretch.”…The Hawks finished the season 1-2 at the Palestra. The Owls were 3-1 there this season…Williamson and senior guard Darrin Govens paced the Hawks’ scoring with 21 points and 20 points, respectively.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.

Allen and Eric will look to dominate inside vs. Hawks

Lavoy Allen and Micheal Eric scored 33 points combined in last month’s 73-46 win against Saint Joseph’s. The teams meet again this Saturday.

The last time junior forward Lavoy Allen and sophomore forward/center Micheal Eric scored more than 30 combined points was back on Jan. 6, when the men’s basketball team opened the Atlantic Ten Conference portion of its schedule with a win against Saint Joseph’s. In last Saturday’s 78-56 win against Rhode Island, Allen and Eric combined for 36 points and shot a combined 17-for-20 on the day. Eric scored a career-high and game-high 19 points. He had 17 points at halftime, when Temple led by 20 points.

This week, the No. 21-ranked Temple men’s basketball team (20-5 overall, 8-2 A-10) faces two teams who are a combined 6-14 in the A-10 in St. Bonaventure and the Big 5 rival Hawks.

In the 73-46 win against St. Joe’s at the Liacouras Center at the beginning of January, the Owls dominated inside, much like they did versus Rhode Island. Temple outscored the Rams 50-14 in the paint and pulled down 11 more rebounds. In the first matchup with the Hawks, Allen and Eric combined to score 33 points. Allen added 11 rebounds, and the Owls outrebounded the Hawks, 49-25, despite Allen sitting on the bench to start the game after arriving 10 minutes late for a film session.

Temple ranks fourth in the conference in rebounding margin at +4.1, while St. Joe’s sits dead last at -7.5. Defensively, while Temple ranks first in the A-10 and allows just 57.5 points per game, the Hawks rank 12th in the 14-team conference. They allow almost 75 points per game, which negates the four additional points per game they average compared to the Owls. No St. Joe’s players scored in double figures in the previous matchup, though on the season, senior guards Darrin Govins and Garrett Williamson and junior forward Idris Hilliard each average more than double digits.

The Owls will be seeking their seventh consecutive win against the Hawks Saturday in a game that will count in the Big 5 standings. With a win, the Owls would have only one game remaining, Feb. 28 at La Salle, that would separate them from the city crown.

More importantly, though, a win against the Hawks (9-16 overall, 3-8 A-10) would provide the Owls with momentum entering their Feb. 24 matchup against Dayton. While Temple sits in a three-way tie for second place in the A-10 with Charlotte and Xavier, Dayton, the preseason favorite, is in fifth. The Flyers lost to St. Joe’s, 60-59, back on Jan. 23 in the midst of a Hawks three-game winning streak. Most recently, the Hawks have lost four of their last five games, including a loss to A-10 leader Richmond. St. Joe’s did beat Temple’s mid-week opponent, St. Bonaventure, though.

St. Joe’s is 1-9 away from Hagan Arena this season, though this game will be held at the Palestra. The Hawks are 1-2 at neutral-site games. The Owls defeated Penn at the Palestra on Jan. 13 and won one of the two games they played there in the Philly Hoop Group Classic during Thanksgiving break. Tipoff Saturday is at noon. The game will also be televised locally on Comcast SportsNet.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.

Shooting Stars

With a week off to ponder their upset loss to Richmond, the men’s basketball team responded in a big way.

Thanks to a record setting day shooting the ball, the No. 21 Owls won the second game of Temple’s double-header, beating Rhode Island 78-56 Saturday afternoon at the Liacouras Center.

“It was kind of a long week in a positive way,“ senior guard and co-captain Ryan Brooks. “Coach was on us all week hooting and hollering as your coach should and getting on us kind of challenging us individually and as a team. He just preached that we were going to have to come out this game more mentally and physically tougher a team than Rhode Island was.”

This is the second meeting between these two teams in a little over a month. The Owls beat the Rams in Kingston Jan. 10 in overtime, 68-64. With Temple sweeping the season series, the Owls now sit at 8-2 in the Atlantic Ten Conference which places them in a tie for second place just a half game behind Richmond and Xavier.

“Temple did a great job of attacking the bucket, getting open shots; they did a great job of shooting the basketball,” Rams coach Jim Baron said. “The first time that we played I thought we did a much better job of defending them.”

It was a record setting day on a myriad of levels for the Owls who with today’s win accomplished their third straight 20-win season which is their 31st in school history. Temple (20-5, 8-2) scored their highest point total of the season while their top-ranked defense in the A-10 held Rhode Island to their lowest scoring total of the year.

Today’s game was a complete role reversal for the Owls compared to last weekend in Richmond. Last Saturday the Spiders shot 77 percent from the field in the first half to jump out to a 44-26 lead en route to a 71-54 victory.

This afternoon, Temple shot 74 percent as they entered halftime with a 43-23 advantage. The Owls point total eclipsed their 42 points at halftime against Duquesne for their highest mark in the first half. Temple finished the game with a school-record 68.6 percent shooting percentage, two tenths a percentage point better than 93-80 victory over Rhode Island on Feb. 21, 1973.

“During the course of the game we noticed that we were shooting a very high percentage but we felt that the reason we were doing that was because we were getting good stops on defense and moving the ball on offense and pretty much getting a lot of shots we wanted,” Brooks said.

Brooks and the Owls probably wanted to forget about last weekend’s drubbing by Richmond but they had nearly a week off to think about the loss. Sophomore forward Micheal Eric said that the time off allowed the team and himself especially a chance to get back to the basics.

“A long week of practice and a lot of running,” Eric said. “I got in better shape, I had time to work on a lot of things, a lot of offensive steps with the big men coach, Coach [Sean] Trice. I just had a lot of time to work on stuff.”

Eric’s hard work paid off big time today as he scored a career-high 19 points on 9-10 shooting from the field. He added four rebounds, four assists and two blocks in 25 minutes.

“I thought we looked for Mike more than we have had in a while and he came through. He did a great job inside,“ Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. “To get where he was today offensively was a nice thing for him and I’m happy for his success.”

Brooks said that it was important that the big men for the Owls got into the action early in the game. Junior forward Lavoy Allen also contributed inside with 17 points, seven rebounds, four assists and four blocks.

“I think we did a great job of moving the ball,“ Brooks said. “Our inside players, Micheal and Lavoy, did a great job of finishing early and setting the tone and they really got the crowd into it and us into it. They did a great job of starting us and motivating us to play well.”

“I think our assistant coaches do a great job of grabbing him every chance they get and Mike I think is starting to understand that coming a half hour early and staying a half hour late and working on your game can be a real asset to how you play,” Dunphy said.

Dunphy is hoping that Eric will transform into a reliable asset down low for the Owls on a nightly basis. Eric missed four games earlier in the season and has been bothered by his knee which keeps him around 15-20 minutes a game. Eric says he’s healthy and is ready to make a big contribution the rest of the way.

“They need somebody to be more aggressive in the paint so they can have open shots on the wing,” he said. “I think that’s what I’m bringing and they’re trusting me and I have to produce for them so they can trust me more.”

There is also is some faith in knowing that if one player has an off night that another will surely step in and take over the scoring load. Brooks, who went 1-8 with just two points (his lowest total of the season) at Richmond, responded by shooting 7-8 for 18 points while knocking down all four of his three-point attempts. Sophomore guard Ramone Moore, starting his second game in place of sophomore guard Juan Fernandez, scored 12 points on 6-9 shooting. Moore has reached double digits in points in each of the last four games.

The Rams (19-5, 7-4) were unable to get anything going on the offensive side of the ball. Only three players, senior guard Keith Cothran, junior forward Delroy James and freshman guard Akeem Richmond, reached double figures. Cothran was averaging a team-high 15.6 points a game. Senior forward Lamonte Ulmer, who came into the game averaging 12 points and seven rebounds, was held to just six points on 2-9 shooting.

“We were able to kind of get back to square one a little bit and clean up some things,” Brooks said. “Tonight we came out with a very good start and hopefully we can keep this going.”

The Owls are back in action Wednesday when they travel to St. Bonaventure (10-13, 3-7 A-10). Next Saturday, Temple travels to the Palestra to battle Big 5 rival Saint Joseph’s (9-15, 3-7 A-10).

Pete Dorchak can be reached at pdorchak@temple.edu.

Game Notes: Temple mascot, Hooter the Owl, celebrated his birthday this afternoon. The Philly Phanatic, Flyers Girls and Temple’s T-Bird were all in attendance… Today’s attendance was announced at 7,080… With the win, Temple leads the series, 53-15, and has won the previous three meetings.

Owls duke it out with Duquesne

Two minutes into tonight’s game, coach Fran Dunphy called a timeout and started to substitute players in off the bench.

The men’s basketball team trailed by five points at that time. The Duquesne Dukes (11-11 overall, 2-6 Atlantic Ten Conference) would extend their lead to eight.

But Dunphy’s strategy worked, as No. 19 Temple (19-4 overall, 7-1 A-10) pulled even with 9 minutes, 34 seconds remaining in the first half, grabbed its first lead 28 seconds later and won, 76-60.

“I don’t think we started the game off really well,” Dunphy said. “So, we went to the bench. I get very unhappy when I don’t think guys are working as hard as they can and really staying focused. I thought we lost the focus early. I think that was just a statement by the coaches to say we need to get our act together.

“I think [all coaches] fly by the seat of our pants,” Dunphy added. “I was just throwing guys in there and hoping they’d do well.”

The Owls’ bench outscored Duquesne’s 39-18 for the game but 25-6 in the first half. Sophomore guard Ramone Moore led all Temple scorers through the first 20 minutes with 10 points. He finished with a team-high 15 points, while freshman forward Rahlir Jefferson and redshirt freshman T.J. DiLeo added career highs in points with 11 and seven, respectively. Their points could not have come at a better time, as senior guard Ryan Brooks and sophomore guard Juan Fernandez combined to play just eight minutes in the first half. Each player picked up two quick fouls and sat on the bench with no points. Fernandez scored to open the second half but finished with just five points. Brooks hit a 3-pointer halfway through the second half. He ended the game with seven points.

“We came out real slow,” Moore said. “The guys pressed us, got up on us. I think Coach just wasn’t having that today. He went to the bench early. I think we had to get our act together, and we did that.

“I think it’s just a collective effort [off the bench],” Moore added. “Every game we’ve got someone different coming off the bench and helping.”

“He thought we were taking this team too lightly and not playing our hardest,” junior forward Lavoy Allen added. “I think he motivates us to play harder, to play to our potential.”

Not only did the bench pick up the scoring in the absence of Brooks and Fernandez, but so did the third cog in Dunphy’s “three-and-change” scoring system. Allen recorded his eighth double-double this season, and his third straight, with 14 points and 15 rebounds. As a team, Duquesne pulled down 19 rebounds the entire game.

“They play a pretty small lineup, so the idea was to get the inside-out game going,” Allen said. “I think our guards did a pretty good job of getting the ball to us down low.”

Temple’s defense held Duquesne, which returned four starters from last year’s 21-13 team that made it all the way to the A-10 Championship before losing to the Owls, to 44.2 percent shooting for the game but 30 percent from beyond the arc. The Dukes’ leading scorer, junior forward Damian Saunders, shot 3-for-10 and 0-for-3 from the 3-point line. He scored his first points with two minutes remaining in the first half. Sophomore guard Eric Evans, who scored 12 points in the first half, did not score at all in the second half.

“You have to give Temple a lot of credit, especially Allen on the glass tonight. He was tremendous,” Duquesne coach Ron Everhart said. “I thought Jefferson and Moore came off the bench and just had very good games. I thought the second-chance points on their end were huge [Temple outscored Duquesne 16-9], and I thought every time we turned the ball over they really made us pay for it in terms of points off turnovers [Temple 12, Duquesne 7]. That’s not a good sign when you’re not getting any easy points.”

Game Notes: Duquesne falls to 1-8 on the road this season, while Temple improves to 10-1 at home…The Dukes have not beaten a ranked team on the road since Jan. 25, 1997. Under the direction of Everhart, they are 1-7 versus the Top 25 and 0-6 on the road. They lost, 68-39, earlier this season to then-No. 6 West Virginia…Duquesne has won just two of its last 17 games against the Owls. The Owls have now won eight in a row versus the Dukes at home.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.

Owls shoot down Musketeers in battle of the A-10’s best

In their first game of the new semester, the men’s basketball team moved into first place in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Thanks to a near-perfect second-half shooting the ball, the No. 16 Owls sit atop the conference rankings after a 77-72 win over Xavier Wednesday night at the Liacouras Center.

“Real good win for us. Very pleased with how we played. It was a very important win for us,” Temple coach Fran Dunphy said.

The Musketeers, entered tonight’s game with a half game lead over the Owls atop the A-10 standings. Xavier has won the past three Atlantic 10 regular season titles but the Owls have won the last two tournament championships including beating the Musketeers last year in the semifinals.

“We’re playing against a Xavier team that has distinguished themselves from the rest of the league as the face of the league,” senior guard Ryan Brooks said. “This was a big win for us, a big opportunity to go out there and gain first place in the league and what we’re continuing to do over the season.”

The Owls are off to their best start since 1993-1994 opening this season with a 16-3 record. With the win Temple improves to 4-0 in the conference and now holds a half game lead.

“That team we played tonight, there’s a reason why they’re 16th in the country,” Xavier coach Chris Mack said. “In the second half, I thought Temple was terrific on offense and we couldn’t get the stops we needed to in order to win the game. It’s tough to win here.”

The first half was basically both teams answering the others offensive strike. The Owls shot 53 percent from the field while the Musketeers shot 45 percent. The difference was Temple hit four of their six three-point attempts and Xavier shooting 4-13 from behind the three-point line as the Owls entered halftime with a 39-34 lead.

The back-and-forth battle continued through the entire second half but it was Temple’s shooting efficiency that allowed them to keep a strangle-hold on their tight lead. The Owls only took 19 shots in the second half but made 13 of them to finish the game with a 59.2 shooting percentage which stands as their highest clip of the season.

“I think we did a good job of getting to spots where we could get shots,” Brooks said. “We thought that if we ran our offense and ran it hard we were going to get good shots. We did a great job down the stretch.”

Xavier didn’t go away and two three-pointers from sophomore guard Brad Redford cut the Temple lead to 68-65 and then 71-68 both with under a minute to play.

Temple, who has faced their share of free-throw issues this season, was 11-14 in the second half and six free throws from Brooks in the final 22 seconds secured the Owls fifth straight win and also 12 of their last 13.

“We’ve been preaching just another step along the way and this is another step along the way,” Brooks said. “We have to continue to do this and this is a big win for us.”

Brooks led four Owls who scored in double figures with 22 points and seven rebounds. He was honored before the game for becoming the 45th player in Temple history to reach the 1,000 point plateau. Brooks entered tonight’s game at 1,015 points after scoring a career-high 29 points in the Owls win over Massachusetts on Saturday.

Sophomore guard Juan Fernandez finished with a career-high seven assists to go along with 15 points. Junior forward Lavoy Allen scored 16 points with seven rebounds, four assists and two blocks. Senior guard Luis Guzman added 10 points and four assists in 39 minutes of action.

Xavier sophomore guard Jordan Crawford, who entered tonight’s game as the leading scorer in the A-10, scored 18 points but shot just 6-16 from the field. Sophomore guard Terrell Holloway scored 13 points with four assists. Senior forward Jason Love was a perfect 6-6 from the field scoring 16 points and seven rebounds.

“Xavier has been the best team in the league for a number of years now,” Dunphy said. “They have a terrific program and I think Chris is doing a great job running the program now. It looks like they are going to be very good for a long period time.”

Currently, Temple sits alone atop the conference standings as they get set to travel to Fordham on Saturday afternoon. The Owls, predicted to finish fifth in the conference, like being overlooked and they’re just focused on the task at hand.

“It’s more motivation for us to go out there and show them what we’re capable of doing,” Brooks said. “We’re using that as a motivation factor, the underdog, we like that role. We have to continue the way that we’ve been playing.”

Pete Dorchak can be reached at pdorchak@temple.edu.

Allen, Eric answer inside in A-10 opener

After a 32-point loss to No. 1 Kansas Saturday, the men’s basketball team did its best Jayhawks impression against Saint Joseph’s in the Owls’ Atlantic Ten Conference opener Wednesday night.

No. 21 Temple defeated St. Joe’s, 73-46, to open the A-10 portion of the schedule 1-0 and improve to 12-3 overall. The Hawks (4-9 overall 0-1 A-10) have now lost three games in a row and nine of their last 10. The Owls face Rhode Island on the road Sunday.

“I think it was very important for us to come back after a very tough loss against Kansas and get back in the right direction,” senior guard Ryan Brooks said. “[Kansas] was a tough game to watch. That was a game that really brought us back down to earth and embarrassed us. That was a learning point for us and hopefully the turning point in the season.

“We knew that it was a new season for us,” Brooks said. “The first part of the season we put ourselves in a good position. This was a great way to start off A-10.”

The Hawks never led in the game but did answer the Owls’ opening 7-0 run with an 11-4 run of their own to tie the game at 11 all. They would never get closer, as Temple answered with a 9-0 run and led by 10 points at halftime.

With junior forward Lavoy Allen held out of the starting lineup because he showed up 10 minutes late to a film session, sophomore forward/center Micheal Eric dominated inside early. He scored six of the team’s first nine points and a career-high 13 in his 15 minutes of action.

“I was happy for Mike,” coach Fran Dunphy said. “He made a one-handed layup in the lane and had a great finish in there. Mike gave us what we needed him to give us early on. I think he decided he was going to post up and post up hard, catch the basketball and do some things inside.

“We did have a size advantage inside, but I don’t think we have great post players yet,” Dunphy added.

When Allen did get into the game with 11:57 remaining in the first half, he built off what Eric started. Allen grabbed 11 rebounds and scored 20 points, his fourth double-double of the season. The Owls outscored the Hawks 46-18 in the paint and 21-4 on second-chance points. They also outrebounded St. Joe’s 49-25.

“The game is in the numbers,” St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli said. “I’ve always been a big believer that it’s a numeric game. We had no double-figure scorers. We got 2-to-1 outrebounded. They had 46 points in the lane.”

The Hawks did hold sophomore guard Juan Fernandez to no points on 0-for-10 shooting.

Game Notes: Temple has now beaten St. Joe’s six straight times…The Owls also ruined the Hawks’ three-game winning streak in A-10 openers…The last time St. Joe’s played Temple when it was ranked was Feb. 29, 2000. The Hawks won that game by three points…Senior forward Rafael DeLeon scored his first career points on a layup that provided the final margin of victory.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.

A humbling experience

2009 came to an end, and so did Temple’s seven-game winning streak and undefeated record at home.

The No. 18 Owls lost, 84-52, to No. 1 Kansas Saturday at a sold-out Liacouras Center.

“Of course I think it’s a statement win,” Kansas’ senior guard Sherron Collins said. “I think we were on the losing radar all day. We showed why we’re the No. 1 team in the country.”

Except for an early 3-2 lead for the Owls, the undefeated Jayhawks (13-0) dominated from start to finish in their first true road game of the season.

“They made shots when they had to. They were relentless on the defensive end,” Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. “We had good looks at times and didn’t make them, and if we’re going to win this game, we’ve got to make the open ones that we have.

“But they’re a really good basketball team,” Dunphy added. “They’re talented and deep, a tough combination. They’re right up there [with the best teams I’ve ever coached against]. They don’t have any weaknesses. They’re good from the perimeter. They’re tough inside. They’re long. They’re very aggressive. They played like they’re the No. 1 team in the country.”

Freshman guard Xavier Henry led a balanced Kansas attack, as four of the five starters scored in double figures and the fifth scored eight points. Junior center Cole Aldrich pulled down his sixth double-double of the season (and third straight), as the Jayhawks controlled the glass with a 42-16 scoring edge inside and pulled down 12 more rebounds than the Owls (11-3). Junior center Lavoy Allen said Aldrich’s size [he is 6-foot-11-inches] and wingspan were hard to simulate in practice.

“We played Belmont the other day, and I think we outrebounded them by one, maybe two, and for our size, that’s just not acceptable,” Aldrich said. “Coach really harped on us. I think today, outrebounding [Temple] by 12, we continued to get extra possessions and made sure they didn’t.”

“We’ve got good guards, but we need to play inside-out,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “One of my assistants told me that in the first half, we scored on 70 percent of the possessions when one of the big guys got a touch.”

Temple hung with the top-ranked Jayhawks for the first 12 minutes of the game. After three straight 3-pointers (two from junior forward Craig Williams and one from sophomore guard Juan Fernandez), the Owls trailed by just two points, 19-17.

But then Kansas showed why it is the No. 1-ranked team in the nation. The Jayhawks went on a 21-6 run to close out the half.

“One of the good things they do well is when a team is on the ropes they go for the knockout,” senior guard Ryan Brooks said. “They went on a little run, and they didn’t give us a chance to get back in the game. Some stretches we settled for jump shots, shooting some contested shots that kind of got them in their transition game and kind of got their up-tempo type play going.”

In the second half, Temple tried to get back into the game via the 3-point shot. The Owls connected on just 1-of-13 and 4-of-16 from beyond the arc for the game. They weren’t much better inside, either, shooting just 25 percent overall. Kansas has held all but one opponent this season, Radford, to less than 40 percent shooting from the field. Three Owls players finished with double digits – Brooks and Fernandez with 11 points and Allen with 10.

Kansas, on the other hand, shot 61.5 percent in the first half when it jumped out to that 17-point halftime lead.

“We’re good defensively when we’re smart offensively, and I don’t think we were very intelligent offensively today,” Dunphy said. “When we can make shots, we can set our defense. When they get out in transition and run the ball at us, they’re terrific in transition [the Jayhawks outscored the Owls 19-3 in the fastbreak]. We just gave them too many easy baskets in transition, in particular in the first half, and they really set the tone.”

The Owls’ defense, ranked third in the nation, had not allowed more than 70 points this season. Their previous high in points allowed came in a 76-70 win against Western Michigan Dec. 1. Kansas hit that mark with five minutes remaining in the game.

Dunphy said the Owls will now “watch every single play of the game” in an effort to improve before the Atlantic Ten Conference portion of the schedule begins Wednesday night at home against Saint Joseph’s.

“We still have 17 games left in the rest of the season,” Brooks said. “This is something we can definitely learn from, a big learning experience for us. The first part of the season we thought we did a pretty good job putting ourselves in pretty good position. But this is a game that got away from us early, and we can definitely take a lot of things from this game. It was definitely a wake-up call and something we needed.

“I think it’s going to motivate us to let us know how hard we have to work to compete at a high level,” Brooks added. “The level of intensity that they had is something that we can definitely take away moving forward.”

Game Notes: 10,206 people were in attendance for Tuesday’s game against No. 1 Kansas, the first time the Liacouras Center had hosted the No. 1 team in the nation in its 12-year existence. The game marked the 10th sellout in the Center’s history and the first since Jan. 31, 2004 against St. Joe’s, when 10,421 people attended…Kansas now holds a 7-3 all-time advantage against Temple. The Owls last beat the Jayhawks Dec. 22, 1995 at the Meadowlands in the Jimmy V Classic…Temple falls to 2-13 all-time against No. 1-ranked teams. The Owls’ last win came at Cincinnati Feb. 20, 2000.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu. Pete Dorchak contributed to this story. He can be reached at pdorchak@temple.edu.

Struggles against Saint John’s

The men’s basketball team scored fewer than 50 points for the second straight time against a Big East Conference opponent this season.

And for the second straight time, the Owls lost.

In Saturday’s Philly Hoop Group Classic finale at the Palestra, Saint John’s defeated the Owls, 55-48.

Temple (4-2) fell to then-No. 20 Georgetown, 46-45, in the second game of the season.

Like that earlier game at the Verizon Center, the Owls struggled to score. Though the defense held St. John’s (5-0) to 32.7 percent shooting from the field in the game, the Owls themselves shot just 28.1 percent from the field and 3-of-14 from 3-point range. Connecting on 9-of-15 free throws did not help the cause either, though the Red Storm attempted double that amount.

“We were at the rim a number of times but couldn’t finish,” coach Fran Dunphy said. “I wasn’t overly impressed with our toughness tonight, and I think that’s what it comes down to sometimes. That was the biggest disappointment tonight.”

“They’ve been calling fouls and the whistles have been going off all weekend,” senior guard Ryan Brooks added. “That’s how they decided they were going to call all these games this weekend. We’ve just got to adjust, and I don’t think we did a great job adjusting, necessarily.”

“The refs, they had stretches where they called every foul and stretches where they let everything go,” Fernandez added. “It’s hard to know what’s coming. It was not because of the refs that we lost the game. We’ve got to learn from this.”

Temple’s three leading scorers, Brooks, junior forward Lavoy Allen and sophomore point guard Juan Fernandez combined to go 9-for-35 and only attempted three free throws. Allen finished with nine points and four rebounds after going to the bench at the 9 minute, 4 second mark in the first half with two fouls. He did not even score his first points of the game until almost two minutes into the second half. In Allen’s absence, Brooks finished with eight points and five rebounds on 3-of-14 shooting. He too did not contribute a bucket until he hit a 3-pointer with slightly less than four minutes remaining in the first half. Fernandez shot 2-of-10, but more importantly, he committed four turnovers to go with his four assists. In the first half, the Owls as a team had a 3-to-10 assists-to-turnover ratio, and they did not take advantage of the Red Storm’s 4-to-17 overall mark in that category.

“I had three turnovers in the first half,” Fernandez said. “I wasn’t ready for the challenge in the first half. I tried to change it up in the second half. I don’t think I helped my team in the first half.”

But, the Owls led 22-21 at halftime despite those statistics. The Red Storm came out of the locker room on a 13-2 run that increased the lead to 34-24. Still, Temple had a chance. With about eight minutes remaining in the game and the Owls trailing, 41-34, St. John’s junior guard Dwight Hardy (who fueled the run with eight of those points), intentionally fouled sophomore guard Ramone Moore. Moore stepped to the line and missed both free throws. The Owls did not score on that possession.

“We actually talked about that during our timeouts and just now in the locker room,” Brooks said. “That particular play [and that possession] was huge. We didn’t talk about not converting on that possession but on those two free throws. They were big. We know that. We were still in the ballgame. Our offense hurt us tonight.”

The Owls now travel to Western Michigan Tuesday and then play three games against last year’s National Invitational Tournament champion Penn State, Miami (Ohio), which almost upset then-No. 4 Kentucky earlier this season, and No. 4 Villanova.

Game Notes: Dunphy said sophomore forward/center Micheal Eric has a sprained medial collateral ligament in his knee and that the trainer said he should give it a week to 10 days off. “Micheal wanted to play, but I didn’t feel like I should push the issue,” Dunphy said…With the win, St. John’s improves to 15-14 all-time at the Palestra, as this game broke the tie…The Red Storm once again made their move in the second half. In their 77-68 defeat of Siena Friday, St. John’s scored 46 points on 63 percent shooting.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.

Next Page »