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Dawn Staley's top-seeded Owls will face Xavier in the title game today at 5 p.m. The defending conference champion, Xavier shocked second-seeded George Washington, 63-59, in the closing minute of yesterday's other semifinal.
The Owls (21-11) are likely to receive one of the NCAA's 33 at-large bids next Monday night if they falter in the final.
"This particular year, we didn't know exactly what kind of team we were going to have," Staley said after Temple advanced to the title game for the fifth time in her eight seasons. "Of course, you want the goal of playing for an Atlantic Ten championship, but you don't know how the journey is going to turn out. But this has been a fun year.
"Whether we win or lose tomorrow, nobody thought we'd be where we are today."
Temple began to pull away when Dayton (25-8) suffered an eight-minute scoring drought that began with 12 minutes, 40 seconds to play. The Owls extended their advantage to 52-39 with 5:16 left on Shenita Landry's layup.
"I can't explain what happened," Dayton coach Jim Jabir said. "We kind of backed off. We stopped attacking; we stopped being aggressive. I don't know if [the Owls] turned up their pressure. I'll have to watch the tape."
Trailing by 10 with less than two minutes to go, the Flyers rallied to narrow the deficit to four points a minute later at 55-51 before the Owls regained control.
"I wasn't worried at all," Temple senior Ashley Morris said after scoring a game-high 14 points. "We're a resilient group. We play in games like this, and we hold people off. We've become that way. In the past we couldn't, but now we're built like that."
Freshman Lindsay Kimmel scored 12 points and Lady Comfort added 10 points and 11 rebounds for the winners.
Kiki Lund scored 10 for Dayton.
Kimmel revealed a reason for her sweet shooting after she connected on 4 of 7 three-pointers.
"I love Starburst, but one of the girls had Hershey bars," she said. "I always have a ton of candy before the game. I really do."
Xavier 63, George Washington 59 - Xavier (23-8) got 22 points from freshman Ta'Shia Phillips against George Washington (25-6), which was ranked 13th in this week's Associated Press poll. The Colonials got a team-high 13 points from Antelia Parrish.
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