City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

Temple has been challenged enough over the opening four weeks of the 2015-16 season, there’s no doubt about that.

Playing No. 1 North Carolina on opening night; taking on two more top-25 programs, Butler and Utah, in Puerto Rico; traveling to Wisconsin to try and beat the Badgers at the impenetrable Koch Center.

But all four--games in which Temple, aside from a few stretches against UNC and Wisconsin, certainly competed--ended in losses.

As much as can be learned from losing, at some point that switch needs to flip. And though the Quakers of Penn aren’t exactly the Tar Heels or Bulldogs, the Big 5 atmosphere at the Palestra on Wednesday night was just as intense, especially as Penn made a valiant attempt at a comeback in a 77-73 Temple win.

“I think we needed this,” Fran Dunphy, Temple’s venerable 10th-year head coach, said afterwards. “We certainly needed the win but we also needed to be challenged like we were down the stretch, and certainly Penn did that.”

For the third consecutive season, Temple is still doing some soul-searching to find itself, with plenty of time remaining until March but only so much longer to achieve some level of consistency.

It’ll take some improvements on both ends of the court, where the Owls have been good-but-not-great both offensively and defensively. Senior Quenton DeCosey (14.8 ppg) had one of his best games of the season with 22 points and six rebounds, while Josh Brown (6.6 ppg), Obi Enechionyia (9.7 ppg) and Jaylen Bond (11.4 ppg) all finished in double figures, something that hasn’t happened often this year but needs to occur with much more frequency for them to win 20 games.

The win over Penn evened the Owls’ record at 4-4, but more importantly gave them a win to feel good about: their first win, over Minnesota in Puerto Rico, was quickly dampened with the Butler/Utah losses in the next three days, while home wins over Delaware and Fairleigh Dickinson are aren’t the type to fire up a program of Temple’s caliber in the way they needed.

“I think we’re still trying to get our night vision here a little bit,” Dunphy said. “We’re still with a little bit of trepidation, we need to get more free and more confident and this helped. I think playing the schedule that we did, it’s really difficult, we had some tremendous teams that we played, including tonight, so we’re getting our legs, we’re getting our vision about us, and hopefully we can start to play well.

Though the most difficult portion of the non-conference schedule is over, there’s certainly no time for the Owls to relax. Coming up on Sunday is yet another Big 5 matchup, against a dangerous Saint Joseph’s squad and potential NBA selection DeAndre Bembry, and then there’s just one home game against Delaware State standing between Temple and the rest of the American Athletic Conference.

That’s right--there’s only two games left before conference play starts.

If Temple wants to head into the third year of AAC play with any sort of momentum, it has to have started building from Wednesday. Oh, and has to survive through finals week, with much of the team starting with their first tests on Thursday, a day they’ll have off from hoops.

“We’ve got some whammys going on for us this week, but that’s the way the schedule’s set up,” Dunphy said. “Our guys will take the day off and do the best they can academically tomorrow and then we’ll work Friday and Saturday in preparation for a really good St. Joe’s team and it’ll be a great challenge for us.”

Once American Athletic Conference play begins it’s right into the grind, with road trips to current No. 23 Cincinnati and UConn, the first team out of the AP Poll, sandwiched around a visit from East Carolina. Then Cincinnati comes to Philadelphia followed by No. 19 Southern Methodist, with another Big 5 game sandwiched in between.

By then, certainly, this Temple team will know what it is: if it’s one that’s ready to compete for an American Athletic Conference title this year, or one that’s still going to take its lumps and regroup for another try in 2016-17.

“Once we get into league play and once guys are back from a couple days of Christmas break, now we have them for a good, solid couple of weeks, and I think that’s where most college teams really get their sense of who they are, because there’s no disruption of school,” Dunphy said. “They’ll learn a lot in that stretch; I think all of us will, as college teams.”