Bye & bye, Owls see improvement

WITH ONLY two games in 4 weeks for Temple, the Owls and coach Steve Addazio have had plenty of time to work out the kinks in their game.

"We've had two bye weeks, so we've had a lot of time here to use it constructively," Addazio said in his weekly Big East teleconference. "This past week, we wanted to use to work on third down, third-and-medium, third-and-long, our ones against our ones, and have a tally to see who won and who lost, and running afterwards for who lost.

"There's tremendous effort to put focus and attention to bring some juice into those down-and-distance situations and we've done that. We completed [on Monday] our fourth padded day with that work, and I see improvement on both sides of the ball. We have to attack the things that we have to work on, so that's what we spent time with."

While the Owls (1-2) have lost the last two games to Penn State and Maryland, Addazio will continue to implement underclassmen in the game plan and get them plenty of meaningful time on the field. That, accompanied with another hard-hitting week of practice, has Addazio confident his team can bounce back Saturday in the Big East opener against visiting South Florida.

"We've had some personnel changes: We're playing younger receivers on a full-time basis, and they're explosive guys. We want to take advantage of that and, furthermore, get them ready to play. And situationally in practice, the amount of emphasis, I don't know what anyone else is doing, but right now we're in full pads and we're almost in a semi-scrimmage sort of situation, and from that we're seeing growth.

"I think we're a team that's working really hard," Addazio said. "We're young, we're a little inconsistent and we're hoping we're going to put that consistency together on Saturday. There's no lack of effort, there's no lack of toughness, there's no lack of want-to. I love our kids and I love the way their practicing, but we're working on our consistency and execution and, honestly, we're not there yet."

The Owls will be playing in their first Big East game since they were ousted in 2004, leaving the football program in jeopardy of being disbanded. Eight years later, Temple is excited to be reintroduced into a conference drastically changed by realignment.

"I think it is special, there's no question about it," Addazio said. "We're extremely excited to be in here. We should be in the Big East . . . we're going to have an opportunity to recruit to the Big East. We have new facilities, the campus is different, the on-campus residents are different, it's a whole new Temple. I love the future, I love where it's all headed. It will take a little time, but in the big scheme of things, it's very exciting and we want to do a great job of representing the university."