Temple Readies For Friday Night Visit To UConn

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It is a short week for the Temple Owls as they prepare for a Friday night visit to UConn in American Athletic Association action.

The Owls are really playing well. They have won three straight and are now 6-3 overall and 4-1 in the American Athletic Conference. That's good for a tie for first place in the conference's East Division with South Florida. But the Owls already have defeated South Florida, so they hold the tiebreaker with three games remaining in their regular season.

The Owls latest win came this past Saturday against Cincinnati, the Owls winning 34-13 at the Linc.

"I was really pleased with our defense," Temple head coach Matt Rhule tells KYW Newsradio. "Especially in the second half, I think we held them to no first downs in the second half and only five minutes time of possession. I thought we got better as the game went on, a lot of our senior players stepped up and made key plays and we were able to sort of wear them down into the fourth quarter."

Listen to the entire interview with Temple's Matt Rhule:

On offense, Temple rolled up 275 yards rushing against the Bearcats. Jahad Thomas had 151 of the yards on 17 carries. Ryquell Armstead added 61 yards on 18 carries and he scored twice.

The UConn team the Owls will play on Friday night is 3-6 and coming off a 41-3 loss on the road at East Carolina. The Huskies have a tremendous wide receiver named Noel Thomas who is putting up huge numbers this season. Through nine games, Thomas has caught 83 passes for 1,058 yards and three touchdowns. The senior has 48% of UConn's receptions this year.

"He's got tremendous skill," Rhule says. "He's a big kid, he's fast, he's athletic. They do a really nice job of making sure they are going to put the ball in his hands, they don't wait around until the second half, they're going to come right out and get him the football and let him make plays. He's going to be someone we really have to match-up well against."

As far as dealing with the short week, Rhule says it is more of a challenge for his team physically than mentally, because they are a bit banged-up.

"But we have really tough kids and we have committed kids and they know that next week they're going to get a nice break on the bye week, so I think they are ready to go play as physical as they can and get ready for a great game," Rhule says.

Last season, these two teams met at the Linc, Temple winning easily, 27-3.

Friday night's game in Hartford kicks off at 7:00pm.