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.

TTN Slideshow: Temple Owls vs Dayton Flyers 02/24/2010

Temple Owls beat Dayton Flyers 49-41 on Wednesday 02/24/2010. Slideshow by Jazmyne Anderson

Preseason favorite visits Wednesday

Dayton, the preseason Atlantic Ten pick, travels to the Liacouras Center after a loss to Duquesne.

A win is a win is the saying.

Last Saturday afternoon, the intensity of the Big 5 was on display at the Palestra. The men’s basketball team survived to beat Saint Joseph’s, 75-67, in overtime. Thanks to Ramone Moore’s career-high 24 points, two of which came on a coast-to-coast layup to send the game into overtime, Temple remains in the Top 25 for the ninth consecutive week at No. 20.

While the Owls (22-5 overall, 10-2 Atlantic Ten Conference) will take the victory and move on, they cannot play like they did last Saturday when they return to the Liacouras Center court Wednesday night to face a dangerous Dayton team.

The Flyers have been a streaky team this season. After splitting their first four games to start the season, the Flyers went on an eight-game winning streak. Since then, the A-10 preseason favorite has gone 8-6. Dayton now sits at 18-8 overall with a 7-5 conference record.

Nearly a year ago to date, the Flyers held off a furious Temple comeback in Ohio to win, 70-65. Dayton forward Chris Wright scored a game-high 20 points, and if the junior puts up a repeat performance Wednesday, the Owls could be looking at another loss to the Flyers.

After his 15 points in the Flyers’ 73-71 loss against Duquesne last Sunday, Wright became the 42nd player in Dayton history to reach 1,000 career points. He leads the Flyers in scoring with 14.7 points per game and is second on the team with 7.2 rebounds. Both statistics rank in the Top 15 in the conference. His 54.3 percent shooting clip ranks second in the A-10. He has scored in double figures in 11 of his last 12 games and posted a career-high 30 points to go along with nine rebounds in Dayton’s victory versus Charlotte.

The Owls will also have their hands full with sophomore guard/forward Chris Johnson, who can do damage with the ball and on the boards. Johnson is second on the team with a 12.5 scoring average and leads the Flyers with 7.4 rebounds per game. His career night came Jan. 9 against Duquesne, when he posted a 26-point, 20-rebound performance.

Temple forwards – junior Lavoy Allen, sophomore Micheal Eric and freshman Rahlir Jefferson – need to be tough on the defensive side of the ball, especially on the glass. The Flyers are 15-4 when they outrebound their opponent.

Wednesday’s contest will be a matchup between two of the best defenses in the conference. The Owls lead the A-10 by allowing 57.4 points per game, while the Flyers rank fourth with a 61.4 average.

Will the Flyers come out like a team on an eight-game winning streak or one who has been playing average basketball during the past month and a half? Will the Owls play like the team who blew out St. Bonaventure, 73-55, last Wednesday or like the one who struggled to beat a 9-18 St. Joe’s team last weekend?

Which Dayton and Temple teams show up Wednesday will decide these matchups and the game.

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

Every team a test from here on out

Saint Joseph’s had a losing record but still took Temple to overtime.

Despite the fact that Temple coach Fran Dunphy and the men’s basketball team have won seven straight games against Saint Joseph’s, the Big 5 rivalry is alive and well.

Going into last Saturday’s game at the Palestra, St. Joe’s (9-18 overall, 3-10 Atlantic Ten Conference) had lost three straight games, including an 88-52 thrashing by Xavier on Feb. 17. After posting nine consecutive winning seasons under coach Phil Martelli, the Hawks entered the game tied for 13th in the A-10. If the season ended today, the Hawks would miss the A-10 Tournament for the first time during Martelli’s tenure.

Also, since Honorable Mention All-American and A-10 Player of the Year Ahmad Nivins graduated, the Hawks have struggled with rebounding. They also rank 330th out of 334 NCAA Division I teams in turnover margin at -8.6 per game.

With all this in mind, last Saturday’s game should have been an easy one for the Cherry and White except for one glaring fact – it was a Big 5 game.

“Everybody says, and I’m still getting used to it, that a Big 5 game is different,” sophomore guard Juan Fernandez told OwlScoop.com. “If you’re ranked No. 1 and the other team is the worst in the country, every game is different. Today it was shown.”

On top of the rivalry, both teams entered last Saturday’s game jockeying for better seeding in the A-10 Tournament. The Owls are looking to seize a first-round bye, while the Hawks are simply trying to get in. That added element made the game extra tough, Dunphy said.

“I think the fact that we’re Atlantic 10 rivals and we’re both playing for seeding in the Atlantic 10 Tournament adds extra pressure to the game,” Dunphy said. “If it was just a simple, very difficult challenge for us with just the Big 5 game, that would be one thing. But then you throw in how important it is for the Atlantic 10 standings, and it really makes it doubly challenging.”

The Temple-St. Joe’s rivalry has always been a heated one. Before the Owls won seven straight games, the Hawks had won six of seven games. No two Big 5 teams have faced off as many times as the Owls and Hawks. Last Saturday’s game was the 150th meeting between the two teams. Temple holds the all-time lead at 85-65.

But Temple’s dominance against the Hawks almost ended last Saturday.

After leading by six points at halftime and opening up an eight-point lead in the second half, the Owls suddenly forgot how to shoot, allowing the Hawks to take the lead with 7 minutes, 40 seconds remaining. The two teams went back and forth until senior forward Garrett Williamson hit a layup to give the Hawks the lead with 5.7 seconds remaining. It appeared the Owls were seconds away from falling in both the A-10 standings and the national rankings.

Fortunately for the Owls, sophomore guard Ramone Moore had other plans. After taking an inbounds pass from junior forward Lavoy Allen, Moore raced down three-quarters of the court and successfully completed a layup to tie the game at 59-59 to force overtime. The Owls regained their shooting stroke in the extra period en route to a 75-67 victory.

Moore, who scored a career-high 24 points while grabbing a season-high nine rebounds, provided an extra element to the Temple offense, one that wasn’t relevant in the teams’ first matchup on Jan. 6, Martelli said.

“I don’t mean this to be disrespectful, but [Moore] wasn’t in the scouting report the first time [the teams played each other],” Martelli said. “He just wasn’t in there. Moore has a scorer’s mentality, and [the Owls] have a simplistic way of playing offense that allows him to kind of flow to the basket.”

While casual fans might be upset the Owls won by just seven points against a seemingly inferior team, that is the way it goes in rivalries, especially ones as heated as Temple-St. Joe’s. Each matchup has unique elements, and no game is as easy as it seems.

In a way, last Saturday’s game can also be used as a teaching opportunity for the Owls. From here on out, every team on the schedule is going to give Temple its all. No game can be overlooked, even games that appear to be utter mismatches.

Be prepared.

Kyle Gauss can be reached at kyle.gauss@temple.edu.

Frontcourt duo reaches for new heights: Michael Eric

Micheal Eric did not start playing basketball until a growth spurt.

Micheal Eric could outrun the other players on the soccer field. But no matter how nimble his feet were, those pesky legs kept growing and growing.

Eventually, although his 6-foot-11-inch frame could adequately fill the soccer goal, he was no longer flexible enough to compete at a high level in the sport, a sport his father coached in his native Lagos, Nigeria.

But when Eric arrived in the United States prior to his sophomore year of high school, that height turned from a burden into an asset.

Now in his sophomore season at Temple, the forward/center averages 5.4 points per game and pulls down 2.9 rebounds per game.

More telling, however, has been Eric’s performance lately. He scored 13 points against Saint Joseph’s Jan. 6 and against La Salle Jan. 30. Then, in 25 minutes of playing time Feb. 13, Eric dropped a career-high 19 points on 9-of-10 shooting versus the Rhode Island Rams.

“I thought we looked probably more for Mike today than we have in a while, and he came through,” coach Fran Dunphy said after the 78-56 win. “He did a great job inside today. I’ll be yelling at him for five turnovers, but to get where he was today offensively was a nice thing for him. I’m very happy for his success. He did some good things, there’s no question. He’s getting better as a player. He’s still a novice at the game and still learning each and every day.”

Eric said everyone he met in the U.S. told him to start playing basketball because of his height. He played for Duane Coverdale, the AAU coach for the Delaware Sharpshooters, who told him to “just go out there and block shots.”

During his junior year of high school [2005-2006], Eric transferred from Cesar Rodney High School in Delaware to the School at Church Farm (CFS) in Exton, Pa. There, he met former Villanova assistant and CFS varsity coach Marc Turner, who worked with him on honing an actual basketball skill set.

“He got me into basketball by waking me up early every morning [Church Farm is a day and boarding school for boys],” Eric said. “The gym is right across the street [from the cottages]. He’d wake me up early some days or tell me that he had the keys to the gym and to meet him in there to work on stuff that I’d see on TV, stuff that I see other athletes doing, so that maybe I’ll like the game more.

“He wanted me to work on the basic fundamentals like ball handling,” Eric added. “I think that actually helped me become the player I am now. Coach Turner helped me get an athletic scholarship to a Division I university. Just the fact that I was listening to him then, and now I’m listening to a coach like coach Dunphy [has helped me improve].”

At CFS, Eric earned first-team all-league and all-area honors as a junior and senior. He averaged 19 points, 14 rebounds and four blocked shots per game as a senior in the 2006-2007 season, and the Griffins won the Keystone Athletic Conference regular-season championship [CFS has since moved to District 1 in the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Athletic Association].

“Micheal was extremely raw and new to the game of basketball when he came to Church Farm,” Turner said. “It was like teaching an infant how to walk. We worked on everything from catching the ball to dribbling. We had to take a couple steps backward first, but he ended up not only as one of our best players in school history but as one of the most coachable young men I have ever had. He made coaching a labor of love.”

Before committing to Temple, Eric received looks from the likes of Rutgers, Notre Dame, Connecticut and Pittsburgh, but Turner said his decision came down to Temple, George Washington or St. Joe’s.
“I actually had a lot of offers,” Eric said. “I wanted an education, too, but just the fact that coach Dunphy wanted to play guys who try to compete and work hard in practice shows that he’s a winner and doesn’t want any guys that are slacking. I had other offers. Almost the same schools I was looking at, Lavoy Allen was looking at. But coach Dunphy is going to play players who play hard and who try to get better, so I followed him here.”

Eric’s transition from CFS to Temple did not go smoothly at the start. His transcripts from his one year of high school in Nigeria were not cleared by the NCAA until after the 2007-2008 season had begun. Dunphy said he could redshirt, and Eric did in order to gain another year of eligibility.

But, he said he found little difficulty in moving from the countryside of Chester County back to a large city like Philadelphia.

It was harder for him going from Lagos, the second most populous city in Africa behind Cairo, to CFS.
“Everyone learns from different environments, and I think I did,” Eric said. “I learned how to handle situations [at CFS] by myself and grew as a person and as an individual a lot. I learned a lot academically. Being by myself, I learned a lot. Here at Temple, I have a lot more people around me, so I’m balancing the two.

“[Lagos is like] a rough end of New York,” Eric added. “Some parts are really good, and some parts are rough. I live in a New York-type environment, like the Bronx. There are a lot of houses, a lot of people walking down the street. It’s fun. It’s a very good environment for some people, for some people it’s a little rough. I miss my family, but just the fact that I’m back in the city, it’s not that hard. You can hop on the subway, hop on the train, hop on the buses, hop in a taxi, all of which we have back home. It’s not a bad transition. I adapted to it very quickly.”

One adjustment Eric has had to make at Temple, at least this year, has been dealing with an injury. He did not play in the games against Virginia Tech and Saint John’s during Thanksgiving break because of a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee. After returning for three minutes against Western Michigan, he sat out versus Penn State. Two games later, in the win against then-No. 3 Villanova, Eric crumpled to the court after reinjuring it. He missed the following game against Seton Hall but has appeared in every game since.

“[The knee is] getting back to 100 percent, but it’s taking its time,” Eric said. “Some days, I just want to go straight to the court, and I feel like I don’t need treatment, but the days I do feel I need treatment with the trainer, Steve Spiro, I just go in there. I’m going to keep the brace and wrap. It’s more of a mental thing. I don’t want it to happen again. I don’t want to risk anything. Prevention is almost as good as a cure, so I just do what the doctor says.”

Even when he was injured and unable to play, Eric still talked with assistant coach Shawn Trice, who works with the post players, and said Trice has helped him most with learning the game’s intricacies.
“He’s talking to me as another player,” Eric said. “He talks to me about what he learned during his college career. He tries to tell me what good players do to be successful – you’ve got to go hard, you’ve got to push yourself, you’ve got to keep working. I think I’m getting better because I have someone telling me to keep working hard, to compete, to never quit.

“But I think he’s also helping me with the IQ for the game,” Eric added. “I think before I just used my height to jump around and dunk, but you can’t do that in college. There are thousands of college athletes just like you. You have to position yourself, think before you jump. I’ve gotten a lot better at it. I know when to be at the right spot, the right angle in some situations. The game is coming more naturally now.”

Trice said he sees Eric developing into the mold of an inside post player who “we can depend on throwing the ball down to and scoring for us in there.”

“I think he’s developed a lot,” Trice said. “He hadn’t played a lot of competitive basketball before. I thought he had some decent skill sets. Now, it’s applying it in a game setting, a practice setting, and that’s what we’re trying to work on step by step. He’s got a ways to go, but he’s got tremendous upside.
“I think Mike has the potential to be a very big contributor,” Trice added. “His role will change a little, but I think that he’ll be the guy who will be inside. Lavoy’s more of an inside-outside guy, so I think Mike will be the force inside, like Sergio Olmos was last year.”

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at jennifer.reardon@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.

TTN Slideshow: Temple Owls vs St. Joe’s Hawks 02/20/2010

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.

Rest gave Owls time to regroup

Temple used a week off to get healthy and work on shooting after its last loss.

Saturday’s win against Rhode Island put a lot of worries to rest for Temple coach Fran Dunphy and the men’s basketball team.

The last time Temple played before Saturday’s matchup with the Rams was back on Feb. 6, when the Owls fell to Richmond, 71-54. Playing without sophomore guard Juan Fernandez, the Owls shot 32.1 percent from the field, including 1-for-10 from 3-point range. The loss marked the second time in 10 days that the Cherry and White had fallen to a top-tier Atlantic Ten Conference team. The Owls had lost to Charlotte, 74-64, on Jan. 27.

The time off allowed Temple to focus on fixing the mistakes it made against the Spiders. After shooting so abysmally in Richmond, the Owls decided to force the issue in the paint, Dunphy said.

“To be honest with you, that’s the game plan all the time,” Dunphy said. “I think we looked more for [sophomore center Micheal Eric] today than we have in a while. He came through. He did a great job inside today.”

Eric, who scored 17 of his career-high 19 points in the first half, combined with junior forward Lavoy Allen to shoot 17-for-20 from the field. On the whole, the Cherry and White outscored the Rams, 50-14, in the paint.

The Owls as a whole also appeared to be more energized, Dunphy said.

“It would be hard to tell you that [the time off] didn’t help after the way we played today,” Dunphy said. “It was a benefit to us. We actually took off Sunday and Tuesday. I think it really helped us. I thought we were much fresher than we had been.”

The break was far from easy, as the Owls were given plenty of time to learn from their coach, senior guard Ryan Brooks added.

“It was a kind of long week, in a positive way,” Brooks said. “Coach Dunphy was on us like crazy all week, hooting and hollering like your coach should. He challenged us individually and as a team. He preached that we would need to come into this game more mentally and physically tough than Rhode Island was. We had to maintain our focus.”

“We were able to get back to square one a little bit and clean up some things,” Brooks added. “I think tonight we came out to a very good start, and hopefully, we can keep this going.”

Fernandez didn’t start, but the time off did allow him to recover enough to come off the bench. The 6-foot-4-inch Argentine’s presence on the court opened things up for other players, especially Brooks.
“It’s good for Ryan to have Juan out there,” Dunphy said. “[Juan] sees so much of the floor. It’s a nice thing to have him back. Juan looked terrific to me.”

The time off allowed the Owls to accomplish something they had not done since the Jan. 20 win versus Xavier – beat a Top 5 A-10 team. By doing so, the Cherry and White not only helped their ranking in the national polls, they put some distance between themselves and the Rams in the standings. Four A-10 teams get a first-round bye in the conference tournament. The Rams were a half game behind the Owls for the fourth seed entering the game.

While Temple might have loftier goals than in past seasons, the first objective still should be to win the A-10 title. To help their odds, the Owls need to secure one of the four first-day byes. The last time a team that did not receive a bye won the tournament was in 2006, when Xavier accomplished the feat.

Kyle Gauss can be reached at kyle.gauss@temple.edu.

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