This night, it was a three-pointer by Temple's Chris Clark that hit the rim, bounced way high in the sky, hit another part of the rim, maybe kissed the glass, and then finally, definitively, fell in. It was a three-pointer that put the Owls ahead of La Salle by five points with 50 seconds left.
It was a shot that sealed the night, that kept Temple's NCAA Tournament dream alive.
It was a shot that killed the dream of the Explorers, that ended the progress that their 2007-08 season represented.
One rim, another rim . . .
Bounce, kiss . . .
Hope, hell . . .
"It was just agony," as La Salle coach John Giannini said later, after the 84-75 final score had been written down for this Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinal. "I knew when that ball went through, if we didn't answer back with a quick basket, and then we didn't . . .
"His shot put us in a situation where everything had to go right, where we were going to have to pull a rabbit out of our hats."
Giannini and Temple coach Fran Dunphy are grown men who rely upon the comfort of strange bounces to get through many, many nights. Their fates are in the hands of children. Their professional rewards - specifically, the NCAA Tournament - are often determined by a committee of people in a hotel meeting room in Indianapolis, and by bounces such as Clark's.
It is what they do. It is the way they live. Dunphy, one of the really good ones, knows just how much of this is out of his hands, how so much happenstance fills so many of his nights.
"We feel very fortunate to have won the game," Dunphy said. "There was a stretch in the second half when we were in big trouble. I think they made three threes in a row . . .
"We were very fortunate. The example of how fortunate we were was Chris' jump shot that hits the front of the rim, back of the rim, just kind of falls in the basket . . . Certainly that is as much the sign of our good fortune as anything else."
About a week ago, Temple clocked La Salle at the end of the regular season, winning by 19 in a game that really wasn't that close. Last night, La Salle led Temple by 75-73 with 2:13 left to play. There was no explaining it and no sense trying. At this point, it is all about desperate kids, desperate time, desperate measures, etc. It is what makes this month so mesmerizing.
The night before, La Salle survived in the first round of the tournament when senior Darnell Harris was faced with a choice: to reach out and shake hands with his coach on the bench or to turn the other way and fire in a three-point howitzer shot from nearly 30 feet away. Harris hit the three-pointer and the Explorers advanced.
This night, a night when Dionte Christmas scored 29 points to lead the Owls, it was Clark and that three-pointer.
"I saw the shot clock run down and I know that I missed a couple earlier, late in the clock," he said. "Then, the third shot, I thought it had to fall for me. We were fortunate to win this game and the shot I made hit every part of the rim. I shot the ball with confidence and it went in for me."
And, because it did, the Owls continue to dream. They are in that knot of teams that are desperately waving their hands at the NCAA Tournament selection committee, trying to get noticed. Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli has taken the tack with his team that there is no sense talking about the waving, that the only thing to do is win the Atlantic 10 Tournament and get the conference's automatic bid to the NCAAs, that it is win or go home. Dunphy has not been that explicit with his team.
"We don't talk about it too much internally," he said. "There's not a lot we can do about it. The only thing we can try to do is win and survive and move on. That's all tonight was: We survived the game . . . We're happy to be hanging around Atlantic City for another 24 hours and hopefully we can survive again tomorrow night. The only control we have is if we get fortunate and win two more games - we can get there on our own."
But it is scant control. St. Joe's plays in the first semifinal tonight and Temple plays in the second semifinal and nobody has any earthly idea how it is going to turn out. Their dreams survive another sunrise, but that is the only certainty. After that . . . a bobble, a bounce, who knows? Who?
No one does. No one can. It is March, after all. *
Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com.
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