TAMPA, Fla. — With two games to play in the regular season, Temple still controls its own fate.
But one more loss could leave the Owls out of their conference title game.
Temple’s season changed in a big way Saturday night, when a lopsided loss to a surging USF added a wrinkle to the American Athletic Conference’s east division standings (see Instant Replay).
The Owls still lead the east at 5-1 in conference play, but they sit just one game ahead of 4-2 USF, which now owns a head-to-head tiebreaker.
If Temple and USF were to finish tied atop the east’s standings, USF, not Temple, would earn the right to play for the conference title.
After starting conference play 5-0, Temple lost to the wrong team at the wrong time.
All of which brings us to Temple’s game next Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, where the Owls take on a Memphis team that’s beginning to look a lot like themselves. The Tigers opened the year 8-0 and appeared headed for the title game and an access bowl bid before back-to-back losses to Navy and Houston ended those dreams.
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After Memphis, Temple will close its regular season against a nondescript UConn squad.
USF, meanwhile, will host Cincinnati before wrapping up with a Thanksgiving game against its in-state rival UCF, which is just two years removed from its Fiesta Bowl win and is now a tire fire.
If we assume that both teams will win their respective finales, next week’s matchups — Temple vs. Memphis and USF vs. Cincinnati — will decide the east division.
If Temple wins its next two games, then it has nothing to worry about; the Owls will win the east and play in the American’s first title game. But if they don’t, they’re going to need USF to lose again, or else they’ll be sitting and watching the conference championship from home.
Asked about these very scenarios after the game Saturday night, Temple’s head coach Matt Rhule eschewed any of the boring, one-game-at-a-time coach speak.
He and his players are both plainly aware of what’s in play, and they don’t mind talking about it. Quarterback P.J. Walker, linebacker Tyler Matakevich and receiver Ventell Bryant all talked about Temple’s precarious place in the standings without much reservation.
But their coach summed it up best.
"I told them in there, they still control their own destiny," Rhule said. "But at the end of the day, if we're thinking about the conference race with the way we played really the last two weeks, we're not anywhere close. …
"We have a lot to fix. They know where they stand. They've earned the right to control their own destiny. They've won eight games. That's a credit. But they have to — we have to, that's we. It's not the players. It's we. We have to play better football.”
And they have to do it next week. Otherwise, it might be too late.