Posted: Saturday, September 4, 2010, 12:04 AM | 7 comments |
 

Temple has learned how to win
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Once all the frenzy over how the game ended had finally died down, Temple coach Al Golden took a moment to reflect on the broader significance of the Owls' 31-24 win over Villanova.

"There's going to be skeptics and cynics tomorrow morning that say, 'Well, you beat a I-AA team,'" Golden said. "And I'm going to tell you right now: wrong. We beat champions. That's a championship team. We beat champions."

Golden repeated the word "champions," and various iterations of it, many more times during his remarks. The point was this: Villanova knows how to win. Yes, the Wildcats were playing up a division, but in a given situation Andy Talley's team knows what to do to finish a game. They did it time and again last year, and on plenty of occasions in prior seasons.

After last night, we know now that Temple has learned how to win, too. It's taken all 12 months that have passed since Villanova won the Mayor's Cup last year, and the process is still far from complete, but the evidence was there.

For most of the night, Temple quarterback Chester Stewart was dreadful. He threw pasess too long, too short, too high and too low. And even after his 62-yard rocket to Michael Campbell that put the Owls in front, 22-21, Stewart almost blew the game by fumbling the ball away on 3rd and 1 at his own 22 with 2:25 left on the clock.

"All the old-time Temple people, they know," Golden said. "You fumble the snap, and there's 250,000 alumni that shake their heads saying, 'Here it goes again.'"

But after Nick Yako booted Villanova back in front, Stewart got his team just far enough down the field to give Brandon McManus a chance to win the game with a 43-yard field goal. Somehow, after all the night's struggleds, Temple had won the game. And in so doing, they gave the program a considerable shot of confidence.

"You've got to believe in the guys, and then you've got to let the guys win the game," Golden said of the drive that led to McManus' winner. "We put them in position to win the game, and they won the game."

Coaches at all levels make the mistake of thinking that if you want to take it to the next level, sometimes it's on the field," Golden said. "Sometimes it's not on the field. Sometimes it's wi

There's audio of both teams' postgame press conferences in the player below, as well as a bonus exclusive interview with Colonial Athletic Association commissioner Tom Yeager. There's also a video in the player at right with analysis from the Daily News' Mike Kern.

(Yes, that sound you hear at the beginning of Talley's remarks is Temple's players belting out "High Hopes" in the background. Their locker room is on the other side of the wall from the press room.)

One more thing before I call it a night. These were the Sagarin ratings coming into the season, with Villanova ranked a lot higher than Temple. Where do you think the teams will go from here?

10. Penn State
39. Rutgers
64. Villanova
99. Temple
112. Delaware
135. Penn
146. Lafayette
163. Lehigh
187. Princeton
204. Delaware State
213. Bucknell   


Posted by Jonathan Tannenwald @ 12:04 AM  Permalink | File Under: Football | | Temple | | Villanova | 7 comments
7
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:06 AM, 09/04/2010
    What a game. Years from now, about 50K will say they were there, but if you really were there you saw a classic.
    — Clifton
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 2:06 PM, 09/04/2010
    I agree with faralli. Chester Stewart definitely wasn't 'dreadful'. If Chester's play was dreadful, how would you describe Charlton's game vs Nova last year, or the game in the EBB vs UCLA? Figured people would cut Chester some slack considering how brutal Charlton was last year, and this being the first game of the year.
    — Leron
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:22 PM, 09/04/2010
    I'm certainly willing to give Stewart some slack, and I'm also willing to say I overstated things with the word 'dreadful.' But I want to get some numbers out there. It was 16-27 for 200 yards, and 62 of those yards came on the one touchdown pass. 15-26 for 138 is okay, but not as good.

    In the first quarter, Stewart was 4-5 for 35 yards. In the second he was 3-7-37. In the third he was 3-3-24. In the fourth he was 6-12-104, of which 62 came on the bomb - and he threw an incompletion on the two-point conversion that doesn't count in the stats. He was 4-7-28 on the winning drive. He was also sacked three times in the game and fumbled two snaps, of which he recovered one himself.

    All in all, fair enough, not 'dreadful.' But it wasn't spectacular, and I will stand by what I said about some of the incompletions being really ugly. The rest, make of it what you want to.
    — Jonathan Tannenwald
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 4:49 AM, 09/05/2010
    To be fair, the WR's dropped a couple of passes that Stewart laid out there within reasonable reach...so his stats would be a bit better with two additional completions. The O-line was not that good on Friday and Stewart didn't have a ton of free time in the backfield before chucking the ball. Nova outworked the line pretty good. The other concern was the play calling...not enough play action and not enough use of Matt Brown as a decoy for end-arounds...Nova could stack the box the whole night and then stunt/blitz at will without being kept honest. It's not a surprise that their biggest play on offense was off of a play action set up.
    — Dickie Dunn
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:52 AM, 09/05/2010
    It was a great game and the Owls worked hard to pull it out. It was a gutsy, hard won performance against a good team. Al needs to work on his time management though. At the end of the first half it took 3 min. for him to wig-wag in five plays. On some plays the defense was still running around getting set up when Nova was running the play. Too much time is being wasted in trying to outfox the opposition before the ball is snapped.
    — capo
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:02 PM, 09/05/2010
    It would be nice if philly.com had one person who knew football, one person who knew basketball etc instead of a bunch of terrible writers who don't know enough about any of the sports to write about it.
    — ConverseB24


7 comments
About Jonathan Tannenwald
I fell in love with the Big 5 at first sight upon moving to Philadelphia in 2002. At various points in my journalistic career, I've covered all six of the region's Division I teams. During that time, I've eaten many soft pretzels from the Palestra's concession stands, which is how this blog got its name.

I write primarily about the University of Pennsylvania and the Ivy League, but I also cover the other basketball and football teams across the city from time to time. In the spring, you'll find coverage of the Penn Relays here.

In addition to all of that, I write Philly.com's soccer blog, The Goalkeeper.

You can contact me by email by clicking here.

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