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BY KYLE FRANKO
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
ATLANTIC 10 TOURNAMENT
ATLANTIC CITY – There is something different about this Temple Owls team. Sure, a lot of the faces are the same from the teams that won back-to-back Atlantic-10 Tournament championships. But those teams made first round NCAA tournament exits.
This one is determined not to meet that same fate. You could tell just from its 69-51 victory at Boardwalk Hall Friday afternoon, even if the opponent was an overmatched St. Bonaventure squad.
"We're just thinking about us," said sophomore guard Juan Fernandez who finished with a game-high 17 points. "I think things are a lot different this year than they were last. We have a lot of weapons this year and I think that's the reason we got the first place this year."
It has been a breakout season for the Owls (27-5, 14-2, No. 17 in both the AP and Coach's Poll) in head coach Fran Dunphy's fourth season. They've won the Atlantic-10's regular season title are projected as either a No. 4 or 5 seed in the NCAA tournament depending on which bracket you prefer.Temple's been in the Top 25 ever since a 71-65 victory at Seton Hall back in December. But its best learning experience may have come from its worst performance. The Owls were riding a seven game winning streak when they met top-ranked Kansas in Philadelphia.
The Owls were embarrassed.
"We said we got humbled by a really good basketball team," said Dunphy, recalling his team's 84-52 defeat. "I thought they played great and we didn't play so good. I thought the humility we learned afterwards was really helpful. We used humble and humility in a lot of sentences in the following days. But I think it taught us a great lesson – you'd rather have [lessons] after wins than losses – we played arguably one of the best teams in the country, if not the best, and we got it handed to us, but we learned."
None took that lesson more to heart than Lavoy Allen.
"I think Kansas taught us to stay humble," said Allen who earned First Team All-Conference honors this week. "We couldn't worry about being in the top-25. We just had to go out there and play basketball and not worry about what other people were telling us. We had to play our game."
Flash forward to Friday and the Owls are one step closer to winning their third consecutive Atlantic-10 Tournament title. The last time that happened was in 1996, when a John Calipari-coached UMass team won the last of its five straight.
All Allen did was put in another day at the office, with 14 points and 15 rebounds.
"I thought he looked for his shot a little bit more than he has in the past," Dunphy said. "I think he's starting to gain that confidence where if he's open from 15-feet, he's going to shoot that jumper. I think he's really learning that we need him to do a lot of different things."
Allen's also the anchor of a defense that gives up just 56.8 points per game. Dunphy's physical man-to-man defense is a change from the quirky matchup zone his Hall-of-Fame predecessor John Chaney employed.
Yet its been just as effective when it comes to producing results.
"It all starts with knowing what are our strengths are," Allen said. "It's about knowing when to help and when not to help. It's all about talking and playing help defense."
When Dunphy looked at the box score and reflected on his team's performance, he came to the conclusion that it had played pretty well. Then again, except for one game, the Owls haven't done much wrong all season.
So when asked if he was concerned that he couldn't pick out many negatives with his team's performance, Dunphy smile wryly and responded, "We work at trying to be perfect everyday."
