Rich Hofmann: For Temple's Allen, defense means another A-10 title

ATLANTIC CITY - Around the Temple basketball team, especially at tournament time, even after all of these years, a dog-eared copy of the Chaney-English Dictionary still earns its place in the briefcase. Yesterday, thumbing through it, the correct saying leaped off of the page. For future reference, it is the entry immediately preceding "Speed kills," "The company you keep," and, "You've got the known and you've got the unknown, and the unknown just kicked our ass."

There it is:

Smelling yourself (verb): to be overconfident, taken with success, the result of listening to too much praise. As in: "Like my mother used to say, when you get uppity, you're smelling yourself."

It was Temple's greatest danger yesterday - and that really is not to disrespect St. Bonaventure, a .500-ish team that played a decent overall game at Boardwalk Hall in the Atlantic 10 Tournament quarterfinals. It is just the reality when you are a 26-5 team headed to a likely seed in the top quadrant of the NCAA Tournament.

These are uncharted mental waters for this group of Owls, who won the last two A-10 Tournaments because they needed to win them to assure an NCAA berth. Those teams were desperate and they were led by Dionte Christmas, who dominated the scoring and the moment. This team is entirely different.

Which brings us back to smelling themselves, and to Lavoy Allen, the player who leads them in two crucial issues in March: defense and humility.

"There were a lot of upsets in college basketball [Thursday], especially in the Big East Conference," Allen said, after he scored 14 points and grabbed 15 rebounds in the Owls' 69-51 dismantling of the Bonnies. "We didn't want that to happen today. We came out and tried not to take them for granted. We went out and played our game.

"We need to win this tournament. We're just trying to do what we do. We're not looking ahead to the NCAA Tournament. Now we're just worrying about tomorrow."

Tomorrow is now today, and Rhode Island is the opponent. It is a game that means everything for the Rams and their tournament hopes, and nothing for the Owls. Most people see Temple as a four-seed in the tournament, which means it could break anywhere from a three to a five, depending upon the rest of the bracket's Lunardian rhythms.

The truth is that, whatever the seed, this Temple team is built for a run because it is built to play defense - and Allen is a huge part of that. The Owls need his offense, too, and they need him to be assertive at that end, but it is his consistent presence on defense that appears to be the first given in every Temple equation.

The Owls haven't had a player average a double-double since Ollie Johnson in 1970-71, which is nearly 40 years ago, which is a very long time. Allen is now averaging 11.8 points and 10.9 rebounds per game. He is on the A-10's all-league first team and its all-defensive team.

We were talking about last year, about a team fueled by Dionte and by desperation, and Allen nodded and said, "This year, it's definitely our defense - that's what starts it off. I think we have a lot of weapons this year, a lot of people that can score. We've just got to move the ball around and find open people."

Often, they start inside and work outside. Yesterday, the game played out with Juan Fernandez (17 points) bombing in some early three-pointers followed by more of an inside pounding. On defense, Allen and Ryan Brooks concentrated on locking up forward Andrew Nicholson, the Bonnies' leading scorer. Nicholson, appropriately harassed, shot 5-for-18.

It is how they win and how they have won - playing defense and valuing the ball on offense. And as for the humility, Allen says that it seems to come pretty naturally for this team, even as the wins and the pats-on-the-back and the expectations have multiplied.

"I really don't think it's getting harder at all," Allen said, with a little laugh. "What has happened is, we have gained more confidence. We try not to be cocky, but we're confident every time we go out and play the game.

"The last couple of years, we were just happy to be there [in the NCAA Tournament]. But now we've been there before. This year, our thinking will be, 'We're trying to win this game.' ''

You have to hope that was their thinking the last 2 years, too, but everybody knows what Allen is saying: For Temple, this year is different. *

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