Temple could have been swallowed up by the moment Saturday.
Instead, it became a meaningful chapter for a program that’s been looking for a shot in the arm.
With several different storylines converging on one day – Fran Dunphy’s last home game as the program’s head coach, Shizz Alston and Ernest Aflakpui playing their last Temple home game on senior day, and that little thing about the Owls needing to knock off a nationally-ranked team to keep their NCAA Tournament hopes alive – everything worked out.
Temple settled itself, got clutch performances on both ends of the floor and basked in one of the most electric Liacouras Center atmospheres the program has seen in several seasons in grabbing a 67-62 win over No. 25 UCF Saturday afternoon, one that could likely earn the Owls an at-large bid in the upcoming NCAA Tournament.
The Owls, now 23-8 overall and 13-5 in the American Athletic Conference, moved past UCF (23-7, 13-5) to secure the No. 3 seed in next week’s conference tournament (Wichita State beating Tulane Saturday night helped settle a tiebreaker.) And beating a Knights team with a NET ranking of 26 gives Temple another much-needed Quadrant 1 win.
The official NCAA Tournament field won’t be announced for another eight days, of course, but Alston thinks the Owls have done enough to get in, even with next week’s conference tournament yet to be played.
“I think we’re in now,” Alston said. “I said that if we beat UCF and finished out with no bad losses, I think we’re in. So I think we’re in.”
Although UCF forward Aubrey Dawkins set forth the most impressive individual performance of the day with 36 points and 11 rebounds, Alston and Aflakpui were mostly unflappable on a day when the Owls needed that fortitude. Alston collected 21 points and six assists and Aflakpui added five points, five rebounds and two steals as he continues to work his way back from a leg injury.
And together, Alston and Aflakpui helped draw three of the four fouls that kept 7-foot-6 UCF center Tacko Fall off the floor for all but 19 minutes and 49 seconds. With the physically-imposing big man in foul trouble for most of the day, Temple outscored UCF by a decisive margin of 30-12 in the paint. When Fall, who came into the day averaging 11.2 points and 7.3 rebounds, left the game with his first foul at the 15:04 mark of the first half, the Owls went on an early 7-0 run.
Fall, who hurt Temple to the tune of 16 points and 11 rebounds in 31 minutes when UCF beat the Owls in Orlando earlier in the season, finished with a pedestrian two points and five rebounds.
“That was the goal,” Alston said when asked how the Owls played Fall and got him into foul trouble. “If we got Tacko out of the game, it would be an easier game for us to win. And Ernest was battling down there, hitting him every play. We felt that he would try to make an imprint on the game and he would slip up sometimes and get some cheap fouls, and that’s what he did – a couple of over-the-backs, a couple of reach-ins, things like that. So we wanted to get him out of the game.”
Meanwhile, Temple got a critically-important performance out of forward Justyn Hamilton off the bench that will perhaps get overshadowed a bit by some of the game’s other moments and storylines. The 6-10 sophomore chipped in 13 points and went 3-for-3 from the free-throw line, with nine of those points coming in the first half.
“I’m grateful for where he is,” Dunphy said of Hamilton. “I think he’s really made great strides. I think our guys have done a great job with him and his player development as well. And he’s hung in there, too.”
And the one Temple player who did seem to succumb to the moment and get frustrated Saturday eventually broke out of that funk in a big way when it mattered most.
Junior forward Quinton Rose, who was stuck on two points for much of the evening and sat on the bench at one point with a towel on his head before Temple assistant Chris Clark talked to him, was a different player coming out of a timeout with 9:03 to go. With the Owls trailing by 48-45, Rose calmly drained a corner 3-pointer off an assist from J.P. Moorman II (10 points, five rebounds, four assists, three steals) and later scored on a layup that pushed Temple’s lead out to 52-48 at the 6:44 mark of the second half.
And after UCF tied the game again, Rose responded with a monster dunk that reminded onlookers of why he has been mentioned occasionally as an NBA prospect. He was fouled on the play and missed the free throw, but it was one of several moments on the day that brought the largest Liacouras Center crowd of the season (9,951) to a level that was reminiscent of some of the building’s earlier days.
Rose scored nine of his 11 points in the second half.
“He just came out with a new focus,” Alston said of Rose. “He was a little down going late into that game, but I told him his time’s coming. He was going to have to step up, and he did that in a tremendous way. That dunk and the 3-point shot, that was huge for us.”
While Temple had no answer for Dawkins, the son of UCF coach and former 76ers guard Johnny Dawkins, it did have an answer for UCF leading scorer B.J. Taylor: Nate Pierre-Louis. The Owls’ energetic sophomore guard was on Taylor for much of the game and was a big reason why Taylor shot 1 of 8 from the floor and managed just eight points and two assists in more than 36 minutes of action.
“He was terrific,” Dunphy said of Pierre-Louis, who took a backseat offensively and scored just seven points on 3 of 4 shooting. “To limit Taylor was terrific for us. And Nate, he’s got that in him. Sometimes I accuse him of having more sizzle than substance. And today, I thought he had both.”
A pair of free throws by Rose and a bucket from Alston gave Temple an eight-point cushion at 61-53 with 1:18 to go before UCF made things interesting near the end when Taylor hit three foul shots with 11 seconds to go after getting fouled by Alston and cut the deficit to two at 64-62. But Alston was fouled on the ensuing inbounds play, hit a pair of free throws, and Temple fans were storming the court moments later.
The Owls, of course, want to get much more out of this season, Dunphy’s last before he turns the reins over to associate head coach and former Temple and NBA standout Aaron McKie. The program has made just one NCAA Tournament appearance in the last five seasons and has not advanced to March Madness’ second weekend since 2001, when Temple lost to Michigan State in the Elite Eight under former coach John Chaney, the venerable Hall of Famer Dunphy replaced back in 2006.
Dunphy gets his fair share of criticism for having won just two NCAA Tournament games in his 12 previous seasons, and the players are well aware and have talked several times about wanting to rectify that before he coaches his final game on North Broad Street. Whether they do remains to be seen, but Saturday was a moment where so many storylines and emotions came together, and Temple passed a big test in the process in trying to achieve that goal.
“I’m glad that Coach is getting his just due,” Alston said of his coach, who was given a long standing ovation during pregame introductions. “There’s so much you hear, that he hasn’t won in the (NCAA) tournament and this and that. But he’s one of the best coaches around in the country, and he’s a hall of fame coach. I’m just so happy that he got his just due this year. We went to away games and they gave him standing ovations. And tonight, to give him a standing ovation meant a lot to me. I just finally want him to be recognized as one of the best coaches around and I think our crowd did that.”
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