Rich Hofmann | Owls see how they measure up against one of the best

Philadelphia Daily News

WITH 8 MINUTES to go last night, the Temple Owls trailed the Duke Blue Devils by eight points. That the Owls were shooting 27 percent at the time and already had committed 18 turnovers lent a veneer of the unlikely to the moment, but there they were, back from a 19-point deficit - banging around, hanging around, kind of (with an emphasis on the kind of).

"We'll watch the film and say, 'If we make this play and we don't make that foolish mistake, we're a little bit closer when we make our run in the second half,' " Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. "And, so, that's what we'll concentrate our efforts on . . .

"Somebody said, 'We didn't quit, we kept hanging in there at the end.' Well, they give you a scholarship to do this stuff. There's no quit. Nobody should ever think about quitting. You should be plugging away on each and every possession.

"There's some positives to take away from it, but there are also some things we just can't do if we're going to play at this level."

No medals for trying, then - which is pretty much what you would expect from Dunphy, pretty much the way you would want it. The Owls ended up losing to the No. 9 team in the country, the 12-1 Blue Devils, by a 74-64 score.

The Owls are what they are, young at point guard (sophomore Luis Guzman starts) and searching for some effective size (although 6-9 freshman Lavoy Allen is coming along). In Dunphy's second season, they lean so heavily at the offensive end on Dionte Christmas (23 points last night) and Mark Tyndale (20 points) that you wonder sometimes how the team keeps its balance.

Banging around, hanging around, they are 6-7 - which isn't bad, considering they started out 0-3. But the expectations are high and they start with the coach, who also happens to be the quintessential basketball realist, a guy who has seen everything more than twice and who has never really been able to do the sugarcoating thing and who doesn't even try.

"I think we're OK," Dunphy said. "I think we have a chance to be a pretty good team. I don't think we can be an elite team by any stretch. But we are in the soup here with our league [the Atlantic 10]. The league is absolutely fantastic . . . The league is absolutely way up and I'm proud of that."

Their next game is Saturday, at Charlotte. Last night, Charlotte won by 10 over Clemson, the nation's 19th-ranked team. At Clemson. After that picnic, the Owls play No. 25 Xavier. It really does just keep coming.

In the maelstrom, then, they will search for consistency. Take last night. Duke was playing without its two injured big men, 7-1 Brian Zoubek (from Haddonfield, N.J.) and 6-8 Lance Thomas. The Blue Devils played very small and they played very young. But, starting the game, Temple played recklessly and didn't shoot well besides. Chirstmas was 0-for-6 on three-pointers at halftime.

"We have a lot of respect for Temple when those two kids [Christmas and Tyndale] are hitting," Duke coach Mike Kyzyzewski said. "At halftime, we knew Christmas was not going to go oh-fer - and he comes out and hits six straight shots . . . I thought when he hit like that, and we couldn't score because of their defense, and then we missed some shots, and they felt a confidence. That's what Tyndale and Christmas can do for their team. When they get going, they bring everybody forward."

Kyzyzewski has played Temple 10 times now, and won nine. Eight of the games were when John Chaney coached Temple. Two schools and two coaches who have very little in common forged this bond, playing often, and now Krzyzewski is continuing it with Dunphy, his former teammate on a traveling armed-forces team that played in the World Military Games in Damascus, Syria, in the early 1970s.

"They're not as big [now]," Krzyzewski said, comparing the Temple teams. "Usually, John had guys on the bench who were 7 feet and 300 pounds. You always wondered what the heck was going to happen, who was going to come in the game. Especially after Christmas - not this Christmas, the holidays - there was the appearance of a 6-11, 280-pound guy.

"When Dunph gets his recruiting and he gets the depth . . . John had a lot of depth. Even though he didn't use a lot of players, he had guys in the wings that all of a sudden could come in and do a job for him. Dunph's building his thing. He's got to build it a little bit differently."

For his part, Dunphy really seems to cherish the rivalry.

"It's a tremendous opportunity for us," he said. "I would play them as many times as they would like us to play them, wherever they would like us to play. Because it's a quality program with great players and a great coach. There is a nice feeling in the building when you play them, whether you're playing at Cameron Indoor or you're playing here or wherever it happens to be.

"I'm not averse to telling you that it's an honor to play a program of this caliber."

As measuring sticks go, they don't come much harsher. But if you are going to get better, what better way? *

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