Penn's First Visit to Liacouras Center without Dunphy as Coach

January 23,2008
Not a whole lot to comment on last night's game - the Penn Quakers were just plain overmatched. They're weak, which perhaps speaks volumes about Fran Dunphy's coaching and recruiting capabilities - Penn's squad has fallen mightily since Dunphy left for North Broad St. To keep last night's result in perspective, St. Joe's (the Owls' next opponent) trounced Penn by 40 points. Nonetheless, the Owls now have (for the first time this season) more wins than losses.

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Returning to the TPC basketball key indicator for a moment - the Owls had almost twice as many assists (19) as turnovers (11) last night. Enough said (for now)on key indicators.

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On to some historical items (last night's game was pretty much in hand from the beginning, with the Owls jumping off to a 14-1 lead, so we occupied ourselves with some reminiscing about the good ole days for Temple Basketball). Those days were long ago - Temple has not been in the NCAA tournament since 2001, and that year was also the last time Temple won at least 20 games in a season, and the last time an Owl squad was ranked in the top 25.

And, has it really been nearly 8 years since Pepe Sanchez graduated? His senior year the Owls went 27-6, including a win over the then #1 ranked team Cincinnati, only to lose in the second round of the NCAA tournament to a mediocre Seton Hall team, a game that will be remembered most notably as the last time Scott Matlack hosted a party at his home to watch the Owls. Not that any of us are superstitious. As for Nick Scull, he became an Owl loyalist way back on March 26, 2002, when he and I took a train up to Madison Square Garden to watch the Owls in a semifinal NIT game. Temple lost to 78-77 to Memphis, in a game so exciting that Nick has now become a regular-season ticket holder. Speaking of Pepe, the last time any of us recall a celebration on Broad Street was November 20, 1998, when Pepe made three foul shots in the final seconds of the game to beat then #5 Michigan St.60-59. The Liacouras Center (some of you may recall that it was named the Apollo at Temple at that time) was full (10,000 plus) of fans for that game, many of whom ran onto the court at the end of the game, and many others carried the celebration onto Broad Street, blocking traffic in BOTH directions, and causing a scene which hasn't been seen since.

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By the way, last night's crowd (announced as 5233 but it sure seemed smaller) was the second-largest of this season  at the Liacouras Center.  At least there haven't been any lines at the beer concession, where Peggy has dutifully, and cheerfully, served us regularly.

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Last night, prior to tip-off,  Dionte Christmas was given a ball to commemorate his scoring the 1000th point of his career. Christmas is a junior, prompting a discussion of who is the leading scorer in Temple's history, and how many points did he have?  And, what is the single-season scoring record at Temple?  Mark Macon (no surprise here) had 2,609 points in his career. Dionte Christmas is not yet in the top 25, but surely will be in his senior year. Hal Lear holds the single-season record (745 in 1955-56) - just for the record, Dionte Christmas had exactly 600 points last season. Eddie Jones, a 10 plus year veteran of the NBA and surely one of the best Owl players in history (Scott mentioned last night that Jones was the best Temple player of the last 20 years), never scored 600 points in a season at Temple.

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