Temple University Athletics
Kami Mattioli: Final Thoughts on Temple Men's Basketball
3.19.12 | Men's Basketball
NASHVILLE, TN -- Most dictionaries define the absence of sound or noise and the stillness that accompanies it as silence.
For some, that silence is a welcome safe haven from tumult. But for others, it bears the suffocating weight of defeat. It's weightless, intangible and invisible, but nevertheless capable of crushing even the strongest of men under the weight of its overwhelming stillness.
Unfortunately, the Temple Owls fell victim to that silence on Friday evening in their second-round matchup against the South Florida Bulls. After muzzling the Bulls in the first half by holding them to a record-breaking 11% shooting from the field, the Owls came into the second half playing some uninspired and flat offense.
Suddenly, the sound of the swish of a basketball zipping through the twine was followed by raucous cheers from those who wore green instead of red shirts, emblazoned with horns instead of wings.
Suddenly, in the backs of the minds of Temple fans who moments earlier were tallying points on their score sheets, a mental clock began to tick-tock, counting down the minutes, seconds, possessions remaining in the Owls' season.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Then suddenly, it finally became deafening enough to overpower one's subconscious.
And then it happened.
Temple, who rode an 11-game winning streak through much of the season, who ended the season ranked No. 21/24 in the AP and Coaches polls, who many sports and media pundits unofficially named the NCAA tournament's Elite Eight sleeper team, was upset by a crafty 12th-seeded USF squad.
It wasn't supposed to end this way. Not for this team. Not for these seniors.
No, Ramone Moore, Juan Fernandez, Micheal Eric and Jake Godino had been here before. They'd been here several times, actually. They'd experienced that very same devastating silence before, and they had hoped to never experience it again.
But it's strange, the ways in which the cards -- or in this case, shots -- fall sometimes. Sometimes one needs that silence to truly comprehend a moment -- or in this case, a series of moments -- that define a game, a season, a career.
The locker room post-game was subdued, as you'd expect, and the stale air was stifling as the team struggled to ward off their collective “what-if” demons. Beneath furrowed brows, the team sat in their cubicles waiting to leave behind those doubts and emotionally detach themselves from this arena, these particularly sour memories and their dashed hopes.
Senior Micheal Eric was the last player to file out of the locker room. He was the last to board the team bus which -- in a cruel twist of fate -- happened to be parked directly next to USF's bus in the underground tunnel.
The sound of the student managers slamming shut the storage doors on the undercarriage of the coach bus was a jarring contrast to the silence -- perfectly portraying the slamming of the postseason door in Temple's face.
With nary a word, the bus driver switched off the bus's interior lights, and so too, extinguished the remaining service time for seniors Fernandez, Eric, Moore and Godino.
Immersed in both silence and darkness as the bus wound around downtown Nashville, these 13 men were forced to find peace in something that had carried them, aloft and untouchable, for much of the regular season -- heart.
It varied by person, but in their own separate ways, veterans and rookies alike thanked their four senior warriors for their leadership and guidance over the past few months. To say it was emotionally-charged would be a failure to recognize the amount of time that this particular group of men have spent together: from two-a-days to seven-hour bus rides, from late film sessions to 6 A.M. practices, from the thrill of knocking off No. 3/5 Duke to the emotional whiplash tonight.
Yet, only in the silence of rational reflection, removed from the Madness, can one look back and string together the moments, the games, the careers that formed the mosaic of this year's team.
There was T.J. DiLeo's stone-walling of Penn guard Zack Rosen in the final moments of regulation back in November. Anthony Lee's buzzer-beating putback in the final moments of the Buffalo game in December. Khalif Wyatt's second-half explosion that led the Owls over Duke shortly after the new year. Eric's standing ovation during the Maryland game in late January after returning to the court for the first time in eight weeks. That time Fernandez drained six treys as Temple went on to crush Duquesne. Moore's two 30-point games.
These moments could stand alone in their excellence, but they're more powerful together as they form the heart and guts of the 2011-2012 Temple men's basketball team.
An alternate definition of silence refers to the state of being forgotten -- to fading into oblivion -- but that, most people would agree, doesn't apply to this group of men.
To Micheal Eric, Ramone Moore, Juan Fernandez and Jake Godino, who are moving on from the playground of Temple University into the bright lights and big city while following their dreams, may you four continue your legacy of success and be content in the fact that your contributions to this university will live on in both the history books and through your leadership in blazing a trail for your peers.
Kami Mattioli, Owlsports.com Columnist
