Temple University Athletics
Temple Unable To Overcome Saint Joseph's Enviroment
2.26.12 | Men's Basketball
PHILADELPHIA -- To say that the Temple men's basketball team played in a hostile environment on Saturday night would be an understatement.
The boos rained down hard and heavy on the Owls, riding an 11-game winning streak into the diminutive confines of Saint Joseph's Hagan Arena.
They were hearty boos, full of the vitriol that comes with facing a familiar foe year after year, season after season -- indicative of a long-seeded rivalry rooted so inextricably in the history of Philadelphia basketball that its legacy seems to extend unencumbered into the antiquity of some of the city's oldest sports memories.
They were boos that encapsulated so perfectly the frustration that tags alongside dropping 10 straight games to your cross-town rival, and they were pelted like daggers at the Temple squad as the team trotted onto the hardwood for the pregame shootaround.
But as the Saint Joseph's students launched a verbal assault on Temple in the pregame, there were smirks of acknowledgement thrown back and forth among those in the cherry and white jerseys, who pushed off the remarks as if they were desperate defenders reaching in for the ball.
It was not unlike the welcome the Hawks received almost exactly a month earlier when they descended upon the Liacouras Center in January.
Except tonight the Owls carried with them an invisible albatross -- a national ranking. The team entered tonight's contest ranked #22/22, marking their first appearance in the Top 25 this season and further widening the target on their backs.
“Temple's a national-level team,” Saint Joseph's head coach Phil Martelli said. “I don't care what the polls say. They're one of the 15-best teams in the country.”
“I considered this to be a championship game.”
In a way, it was. Somewhat lost in the A-10 scramble for postseason seeding was the significance of tonight's clash in regard to the Big 5 title. A Temple win would have secured the Big 5 title outright with a perfect season for the second time in 24 years.
Unfortunately, the homecourt advantage proved too much for the Owls, who seemed to struggle to string offensive runs together, though they did manage to cut a 14-point deficit -- the game's largest -- down to just five heading into halftime, 37-32.
“We got out of character offensively,” Fran Dunphy said. “We shot some shots we probably should not have attempted.”
Dunphy referred to the majority of those shots as “10 percenters” -- a nod to their perceived rate of success, though in a post-script he noted that often times the streaky Owls' guards can get those types of shots to fall in spite of their difficulty.
Early foul trouble also furthered the team's struggles. Temple combined for 26 fouls, to tie the team's season-high in team fouls, and had five of its players end the game with four fouls. In fact, the only Temple starter to end the game with less than four fouls was Ramone Moore, who had two.
As the game waned on into its final moments, it felt like the staccato of the snare drum punctuating the St. Joe's version of the “on you” chant was a knife directed right at the hearts of the Owls, but they soldiered on in spite of their struggles.
Even in the 82-72 loss, Temple showed glimpses of the team they have been for much of the duration of February.
Khalif Wyatt nailed a trey at 15:54 in the second half to put the Owls within one point, 44-43, and a Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson pull-up jumper on the following possession put them ahead. Micheal Eric came out in the second half and threw down a series of dunks so forceful that the rim appeared to groan in fear.
But eventually the tunnel of opportunity narrowed enough to extinguish the light at its end, and the Temple Owls dropped a difficult game to the Hawks, with whom they now share this season's Big 5 title.
“We knew it would be like this coming into the game,” Ramone Moore said when asked about playing in a hostile environment. “That's part of the Big 5 rivalry.”
At times, support for the home team was deafening in the way it reverberated off the concrete peaks and valleys of the Hagan Arena. Though it may temporarily have quieted the streaking Owls, it cannot silence the team's 22-6 overall record or Temple's #1 ranking in the A-10 tournament.
Game recognizes game, as they say. And perhaps no one said it better tonight than Martelli in his postgame press conference.
“Tonight,” he said. “We stared in the eyes of a champion.”
by Kami Mattioli, Owlsports.com Columnist
