City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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As soon as the word “Temple” appeared next to the slot next to the No. 10 seed in the South Region on Sunday night’s NCAA Tournament Selection Show, the Owls’ moods changed immediately.

It had been a difficult 24 hours for the players, coaches and managers involved with Temple’s basketball program, ever since a loss to UConn in the American Athletic Conference semifinals put their postseason fate very much in limbo.

Some bracket predictions had them in, some had them out. And a year after a Temple had been the last team left out of the tournament following a 23-win season, only a league championship would have prevented the nerves from setting in this time around.

“Everybody was quiet, everybody was thinking about the chance we had in Orlando and we came up short,” senior wing Quenton DeCosey said. “The next thought process was seeing if we’d get called in the NCAA tournament and just thinking about today.”

Then the Owls’ name came up just past the 25-minute mark of CBS’ two-hour selection show, bringing relief mercifully quick. Some bubble teams had to wait nearly 90 minutes to learn their fate in the longest selection show yet.

But it was official: Temple was back in the dance for the 32nd time, its seventh trip under head coach Fran Dunphy and the Owls’ first appearance since a string of six straight ended in 2013.

“I’m really happy for our seniors in particular,” said the 10th-year coach, who’s taking his 16th team to the tournament between his years at Temple and Penn. “What I said to them was, when you go into our complex you can see a banner that has all the years Temple has made the NCAA Tournament. I said ‘we’re missing ‘14 and ‘15, and I don’t want to miss ‘16.’ I’m happy for those guys.”

The uncertainty around Temple’s inclusion in the 2016 NCAA Tournament was all-too-familiar.

Last year, the Owls lost in the American Athletic Conference semifinals, to a Southern Methodist squad that had already gotten the better of them twice that year.

After going 6-6 in non-league games and losing a few questionable games--a 27-point home loss to Houston comes to mind--there was the feeling of deja vu all over again as the Selection Show started up.

Until that name appeared on the screen.

“It’s just a great feeling for the seniors, and for the team. Everyone wanted this so bad,” junior point guard Josh Brown said. “It’s like the monkey if off of our backs from the last two years.”

The emotional ups-and-downs that Temple experienced over the weekend were symbolic of the entire season.

“It’s been kind of like a roller coaster,” senior forward Jaylen Bond said. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but we stuck together and stayed as a team and a family. We’ve always had each other’s backs. These are the times you look forward to.”

But the happiness is short-lived. It has to be.

If Temple wants to down No. 7 Iowa (21-10, 12-6) on Friday, the Owls need to move past the good vibes and back into their normal rhythm.

“(The mindset) changes quickly,” DeCosey said. “Tomorrow we’ll get back to work and start practicing again. We’ll start to prepare for Iowa, they’re a pretty good team so we’ll just see what we can do to prepare for them.”

Like DeCosey and senior forward Devontae Watson, who were freshmen the last time Temple went to the Big Dance, Bond has a taste of March Madness from his freshman year at Texas in 2011-12, when the Longhorns qualified as a No. 11 seed but lost to No. 6 Cincinnati in the first round. Also a freshman when Temple last went in 2013 was Daniel Dingle, now a redshirt junior.

The rest of the roster will be making its NCAA tournament debut--including the final senior, sixth man Devin Coleman, who spent his first two years at Clemson before arriving at Temple midway through the 2013-14 season.

“Once we get through the opening minute jitters that we’ll probably have, we’ll settle down and play some basketball,” Dunphy said. “Let’s try to be as focused as we possibly can and get rid of all the outside craziness that is typically there for an NCAA tournament game.

“It’s a different atmosphere, there’s no question about it,” he added.