Owls say "Who?"
By BRENDAN F. QUINN
Basketball Times
Atlantic City, N.J. — Every Monday for the past 12 weeks, Temple has occupied a rung on the Top 25 ladder. If you remember, the Owls sat at 11-2 with a victory over then-No. 3 Villanova when the calendar flipped from 2009 to 2010.
America fell head over heels for the Temple Owls.
Well, maybe not.
All season long, the Owls perched themselves on the national stage. At no point, though, has the national spotlight slid over to include them in the show. Ask a casual college hoops observer to name one Temple starter. Go ahead.
Hear that silence?
Outside of Philadelphia and beyond the borders of the Atlantic 10, Temple is just Temple. This is a program ranked sixth all-time in victories (1,737), behind Kentucky, Carolina, Kansas, Duke and Syracuse. People are used to Temple winning, but this season’s addition lacks any discernable player appearing on ESPN a couple times a week.
You know all that hullabaloo surrounding Syracuse’s lack of a top 100 player? Of course you do. Now consider this – Temple has one player who landed on rivals.com’s top 150 list, junior center Lavoy Allen. Furthermore, eight of Temple’s 12 scholarships belong to Philadelphia-area players.
And yet, with Friday’s 69-51 victory over St. Bonaventure in the Atlantic 10 tournament quarterfinals, No. 17 Temple is now 27-5. Currently considered a four or five seed in the NCAA Tournament, the Owls could flirt with being a No. 3 seed if they capture their third straight A-10 title on Sunday. This has all come despite the fact that Temple was selected fifth in the conference’s preseason poll (it won the regular-season title with a 14-2 mark) and was ranked 97th overall in Yahoo!'s preseason magazine. The Owls were overlooked early on because the team’s best player, gun-slinging guard Dionte Christmas, exhausted his eligibility.
Funny how a lack of expectations can direct where the spotlight shines, no?
Coming off back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances, Temple rode the hot hand of Christmas the past two seasons. The Owls were good, but not this good. To a certain extent, Christmas’ mere presence and ability inhaled the Owls’ offense in the recent past.
Nowadays, this is a team driven by the three-man unit of Allen, sophomore point guard Juan Fernandez and senior wing Ryan Brooks. Allen, a first-team all-Atlantic 10 selection, stands at 6-foot-9 and is satin smooth in all aspects of the game. He’s one of those big men who you watch and say, “Oh, he had a nice game,” only to look at the box score and realize he posted 18 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks. Fernandez, a transport from Argentina, is a stylish ballhandler with an awkward but effective jumper and the court vision of a fighter pilot. Georgetown’s John Thompson III once called him “Pepe Sanchez with a jump shot,” paying homage to a former Temple point guard. While Fernandez is the floor general, though, Brooks is El Capitán. A lockdown defender who has grown into a solid offensive threat, he’s the Owls’ vocal leader.
From top to bottom, Temple is a team stocked with players who not only know their roles, but embrace them. The team is smart, ranking 10th nationally in fewest personal fouls (15.1 pg), 12th in fewest turnovers (10.7 pg) and 14th in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.38). The team is balanced, with six players averaging over four points and none more than 15. And, most importantly, the team is well coached.
That brings us to Fran Dunphy.
People who still compare Temple to the program that John Chaney drove around like a tank are misguided. Juxtaposed with the current team, that program was a foreign country. Things were done differently there. This is Dunphy’s program. His mustachioed, hangdog grill is the face of the program. His coaching is the backbone of it.
To put Dunphy’s reliance on Philly-based talent in perspective, consider that the five other Division I schools in the city use 12 scholarships on local talent – combined. Only La Salle (four) has more than three local players and Penn, which is coincidentally housed in Philly’s hoops holy land, the Palestra, has zero.
“You’re in Philadelphia, so that has to be a big focus for you,” said Dunphy following Friday’s victory over St. Bonaventure. “It’s a proving ground to see if you can get the best players to come. Why not use Philadelphia? We have an abundance of players in this local area.”
“You study the local kids more because you can jump in your car and go see a game or go see a practice,” said Dunphy, who came to Temple via Penn, making him the only coach in Big 5 history to lead two city programs. “If you’re involved with a kid from Florida, which we are and were lucky enough to get (Anthony Lee), I couldn’t study him the way I could study someone else. That’s the key word in this – study – you’re with these guys every day for four or five years (in college), so you want them to understand what you’re like and you want to know what their quarks are.”
In March 1969, Temple spoiled Bob Cousy’s final game as Boston College coach with an 89-76 victory in the NIT finals at Madison Square Garden. This was back when the NIT had been passed by the NCAA Tournament but still carried enough weight to make the victory resonate. Coached by the legendary Harry Litwack, the Owls were led by a center, Eddie Mast, who played one year of high school ball, a forward, Jim Snook, who transferred from the Naval Academy, and a swingman, John Baum, who played for a business college in Philly before Litwack stumbled upon him.
This is far from being the first time that Temple has defied the odds with nameless faces.
Now Dunphy is the curator of Temple’s proud basketball tradition. His team is filled with guys named “whose-his-face” and “what’s-he-called.” But that really doesn’t matter, does it? Names don’t win games – players do.
And Temple has players.
Whether you know them or not.
Brendan F. Quinn has contributed to Basketball Times since 2006 and can be reached at bfquinn06@gmail.com.
Photo Credit:
www.Temple.edu
www.OwlSports.com
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment