‘We weren’t tough enough, as simple as that:’ You can’t say Cincinnati wanted it more than Temple | Mike Jensen

I’ve covered too many mentally tough Big 5 basketball players over the last quarter century to even start a ranking list. Except if I had to name one person, a name comes to mind, and he was inside the Liacouras Center on Sunday afternoon, on the court.

It just happened to be at halftime, when Temple’s 1999 NCAA Elite Eight team was honored, the last guy to walk out, Rasheed Brokenborough. He wasn’t an All-American. His shot could get a little funky. But I always said, even if Brokenborough shot 2-for-16, that pair would come at just the right time, and, more often than not, kill the other guys. (And he rarely shot 2-for-16 ... and everything else he did provided wins.)

It’s admittedly not fair to bring up an older guy just to give the current guys a hard time. Except the current guys were giving themselves a hard time Sunday after letting go of a lead to Cincinnati.

“We weren’t tough enough, simple as that," said sophomore forward J.P. Moorman, who led the Owls with 20 points off the bench.

There was just no way to avoid this subject, since Temple got absolutely clobbered on the boards, giving up 16 offensive rebounds to 19 defensive ones for the Owls. At the other end, Cincy was even more dominant, getting 30 defensive rebounds, to three for Temple.

“To a man, they’re very long, very strong, and they’re relentless," Owls coach Fran Dunphy said after his team failed to hold on to a 14-point first-half lead and lost, 72-68.

Pointing to big plays that killed them, Dunphy started with a missed Cincinnati free throw, grabbed by the Bearcats for a put-back. That’s a can’t happen play, a spirit crusher.

Another coach made the point earlier this weekend that good shooters missing free throws also can fall into the category of mental toughness, and Temple didn’t pass this test, either. The Owls were up 10 with 13 minutes left. Not to say they were cruising, not against Cincinnati. But they’d gotten the best of it. Early in the second half, they had four trips to the line for two shots. They made one of two each time. After the last one, they still had an 11-point lead. But it could have been more. Temple needed it to be more.

With a nine-point lead, they missed a layup, and a follow-up layup, and then a layup on the next possession. Those shots were all contested, but they got right to the rim and came up empty. And Cincinnati answered with a four-point play, a three-pointer from the wing, in the midst of drawing a foul.

Just like that, the nine-point lead that could have been a 13-point lead was down to five, Cincinnati smelling blood.

So that’s it, we’re calling a 15-5 team soft? No, Temple has won games this season on mental toughness. They’ve come back when you didn’t see it happening. They’ve held on when it looked as if the clouds were opening up.

This game, though. You can't deny the facts. It reminded Owls point guard Shizz Alston of the Villanova game, when the Owls had control but let it slip. Those are the forget-about-sleep specials, especially when such games increase in importance in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee.

It’s easy to sit there and say that Temple needed the win but that 18-3 Cincinnati wanted it more. That’s simply not true. Temple wanted it very badly. You could see it all over the face of Owls guard Nate Pierre-Louis as soon as it ended, as he pulled up his jersey and bit into it.

You want to blame the coach, have at it, that’s what he gets paid for, except more than a few players on my “most mentally tough” list are Dunphy players.

Walking of the front of the Liacouras Center, a straggling contingent of ‘99-ers was in the lobby. Someone mentioned that it was great that Brokenborough, who went on to a long overseas career, had shown up, looking as if he could still go 40 minutes.

Drew Golin, a manager on the ‘99 team, as sharp as they come, put it like this about Brokenborough: “We wouldn’t have lost the next year if he was still there. He wouldn’t have allowed it.”

Golin was talking about the 2000 Seton Hall NCAA upset, maybe the toughest loss in Temple history.

It’s hard to argue the point, since I was in the front of the choir he was preaching at, and I can’t remember seeing Brokenborough miss a box-out on a free throw.