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Owls fight fatigue, but keep winning

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. - Temple football coach Matt Rhule had just completed his postgame press conference following Friday's 21-0 American Athletic Conference win at Connecticut and he couldn't get up from his seat right away.

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. - Temple football coach Matt Rhule had just completed his postgame press conference following Friday's 21-0 American Athletic Conference win at Connecticut and he couldn't get up from his seat right away.

Rhule was exhausted. Who could blame him?

The Owls have been going non-stop since camp began the first week of August and now they will have a bye week.

Imagine how his players feel at this point?

Yet with each passing week, this banged up Temple team has somehow appeared to get better.

Temple has won a season-high four in a row, is now 7-3 overall and 5-1 in the AAC. The Owls will clinch the East Division for a second straight year if they can win their final two games, at Tulane and home against East Carolina.

Like their coach, the players are exhausted, but they would rather have walked home from Connecticut than succumb to fatigue.

"It is very hard right now because every muscle and every bone hurts," said defensive end Praise Martin-Oguike, who had a sack for the fifth consecutive game.

There is, however, a simple reason why Martin Oguike and his teammates have kept pushing.

"Nobody wants to be the guy who lets anybody down," he said.

Last year Temple started out 7-0 and while the Owls did earn the division title, they faded in the second part of the season, finishing 10-4.

This year the Owls lost two of their first three and three of six and appear to be getting stronger, despite having no time off.

"It's just the toughness," said running back Jahad Thomas, who had two receiving touchdowns, giving him 14 scores this season. "The offseason workouts that we endure, we do it for moments like this."

And make no mistake, they have been tough moments.

This was not a perfect game for Temple. The Owls scored on their first three possessions on three Phillip Walker TD passes and then the offense sputtered but the defense maintained its pace, continuing a recent trend.

During last week's 34-13 win over Cincinnati, the defense allowed no points and 11 yards from scrimmage in the second half.

Two weeks before that in a comeback 26-25 win over Central Florida, the Owls pitched a second-half shutout and overcame a 25-7 deficit.

Rhule talked afterward about how he has been listening to his players, pulling back a little when possible, but this week wasn't one of those pull-back weeks. The Owls went full throttle in practice.

"This week we made a decision. We were in full pads on Tuesday, and we were in helmets and shoulder pads on Wednesday before a Friday game and a lot of people wouldn't do that," Rhule said.

Still, those hard practices sent a message - yes the coach knew his players were tired and banged up, but this was just another way to test the group's mental and physical toughness.

"We have tough kids and we want to coach them tough," Rhule said. "Now I will back off on them this week."

Even these players, who thrive on work, won't resist a little backing off at this point.

mnarducci@phillynews.com

@sjnard