ORLANDO, Fla. — Temple, as an at-large hopeful on the bubble, lost in the semifinals of the American Athletic Conference Tournament.
The Owls are now headed back to North Philadelphia, where they’ll spend the next 24 hours sweating out their NCAA Tournament chances.
Those sentences could have been written last year. Actually, they were. As Fran Dunphy admitted Saturday night:
“We have been through it. We were through it last year. It’s a very difficult time.”
Twelve months ago, it was a résumé-defining loss to Larry Brown and SMU.
This time, it was a 77-62 drubbing at the hands Kevin Ollie and UConn (see Instant Replay). The Owls went up 12-4 early and then watched as UConn ripped off a 31-7 run over the next 11 minutes to go up by 16.
“We thought we jumped on them early,” junior guard Josh Brown said. “But they kind of had a different look coming out of that first timeout. So, they threw the next punch and we weren’t able to bounce from that until the second half.”
Temple chipped away in the second half, cutting the lead on multiple occasions to seven and then six, but there was no comeback this time, not like there was at the Storrs Center last month. UConn’s Daniel Hamilton and Shonn Miller put Temple down and made sure they stayed there.
The Owls had already beaten UConn twice this season, and a third win would have have put a bow on Temple's tournament résumé.
Seated in the media room after his team’s loss, head coach Dunphy again faced the question:
“How tough is the next 24 hours going to be for you and your team?”
“Yeah, it’s hard. It’s very hard,” he answered.
“It’s, again, in the hands of the committee, and we’ll see how other games play out over the next number of hours.”
Thankfully for Dunphy and his players, most of those games on Saturday played out in Temple’s favor.
Michigan lost to Purdue, LSU lost to Texas A&M, Georgia lost to Kentucky, and Davidson lost to VCU.
But Fresno State topped San Diego State in the Mountain West Final, which could give that league a second bid, with the Aztecs (RPI 32, SOS 66) as an at-large.
Temple, meanwhile, will have to rely on its status as he American’s regular-season champion, which should carry some weight.
Per STATS Inc., via Temple’s sports information department, only one team from a top-10 league in the last 10 years has won its conference’s regular-season title outright and failed to make the NCAA Tournament. That team was Washington in 2012.
No team over that same stretch has won outright a top-10 league’s regular-season title and advanced to that league’s semifinal tournament and been left out.
“We’re proud to have represented our conference as a regular-season champion,” Dunphy said. “We won a game in the playoffs but now we’re subject to a lack of control. It will be somebody else’s decision.”
That decision may well come down to what happens in the American’s championship game Sunday, when UConn meets Memphis.
As of Saturday morning, both ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and CBS’ Jerry Palm had the American receiving three bids — Temple, UConn and Cincinnati. Should UConn beat Memphis in the final, it’ll lock up their own berth, and you would think Temple would sneak in with the Huskies.
Yes, regular-season champs from top-10 leagues make the tournament, but Temple’s résumé isn’t all that impressive when when judged against other teams on the bubble. They lack a signature road win. The Owls have an RPI of 59 and an SOS of 81. Their Sagarin score is 82. Ken Pomeroy likes them even less at 88. Compare those last two numbers two Cincinnati’s (33, 32) and UConn’s (31, 29) and San Diego State’s (41, 37).
You see how this gets murky?
As of Saturday night, Palm, the guy who stay steadfast in his claim that Temple wouldn’t make the tournament last year (and was proven right), had the Owls as one of his last four in.
But he added this: “The Owls fell to 8-10 against the top 200 teams in the RPI, and has a loss to East Carolina outside that group. An at-large berth is not a sure thing for the Owls, who will be among many teams sweating it out the next 24 hours.
"Temple, could see its bid disappear if Memphis … wins the AAC automatic bid.”
And so, once again, Temple will wait.
“It’s a killer number of hours that we’re going to have to wait. … We’ll see how it goes and we’ll probably do similar things [to last year], just kind of get together as a team tomorrow night and see what 6 o’clock brings," Dunphy said.
Last year, it brought the NIT. And this year?
“We just pray tomorrow,” Brown said, ”on Selection Sunday that we hear our names called.”