Watch CBS News

Temple Readies For Saturday's Cherry & White Game

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Temple football team is winding down spring workouts leading up to Saturday's annual Cherry and White spring game.

The Owls have held more than a dozen practices since the middle of March.

"I think it's been a really productive spring as we take a bunch of young kids that either kind of waited their turn or have just gotten here and we've tried to turn them into Temple football players," Temple head coach Matt Rhule tells KYW Newsradio. "And I think they've been up to the task. They've worked hard and we've certainly made a lot of progress."

Listen to the entire interview with Temple head coach Matt Rhule:

 

Temple is coming off an outstanding 10-4 season which ended with a berth in the Boca Raton Bowl. The Owls beat Penn State for the first time in more than 70 years, went toe-to-toe with Notre Dame before losing a heart breaker and also earned a spot in the American Athletic Conference Championship Game. All that success means that every opponent in 2016 will be very aware that Temple is on the schedule.

"We have to expect, now that we've proven that we can win at a high level, we have to prove that we can handle everyone's best shot and we expect everyone's best shot," Rhule says. "The way, to me, you handle that, is you never underestimate anybody. You make sure that you are at your best each and every opportunity. That's something that we didn't always do. We won a lot of games not playing our best football. We lost some games at the end of the year where we didn't play our best football. So our goal is really to make sure that day in and day out we're playing our best football. If we do that than you can control what you can control and you have a lot more success."

Rhule talks about one position group that has really caught his eye this spring.

"I've been really pleased with our linebacking corps," Rhule says. "With three guys who played a lot of football in Stephaun Marshall, Avery Williams and Jarred Alwan coming back. But with the loss of (Bednarik Award and Bronko Nagurski Trophy winner) Tyler (Matakevich to graduation), we knew it was going to take everybody and some of our younger kids Chapelle Russell, Shaun Bradley, Daishaun Grimes, Todd Jones and we've had a bunch of guys step up and have played really well. So that would be a group that I'm extremely excited about."

Temple's spring game on Saturday at the Edberg-Olson Football Complex will get started at 1:00pm.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.