#23 Temple Readies For Regular Season Home Stretch
By Matt Leon
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Despite that loss to St. Joe's Saturday night, Temple still leads the Atlantic 10 with an 11-3 mark (22-6 overall) as they get ready to play their final home game of the regular season Wednesday night against UMass.
In Saturday's 82-72 defeat against the Hawks, head coach Fran Dunphy says his team played out of character on offense.
"We tried to do some things too quickly. We took some shots, maybe we can be successful 15-20 percent of the time and that's not a good percentage. We need to do things that can be successful, 50-60 percent of the time."
Even with that loss to St. Joe's, however, the Owls remain ranked this week as they fall only one spot to #23 in the AP Top 25.
Temple will try and bounce back on Wednesday night as they host 19-9 UMass who are coming off a blowout loss at Dayton, 76-43, on Saturday. Dunphy says they'll have to work hard to contain the Minutemen's leading scorer, sophomore point guard Chaz Williams.
"He's really a tough kid to guard. We'll have our hands full so we'll have to share that responsibility amongst all of our guards and see if we can't keep him in front of us. The problem is that he can also make threes, so that's a difficult task, so we'll have to get a lot of help from a lot of different people in that game."
Williams leads the Minutemen in scoring at 15.8 points per game.
Listen to KYW's Matt Leon's interview with Fran Dunphy:
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The final home game also means "Senior Night", as the Owls will honor seniors Michael Eric, Ramone Moore, Juan Fernandez and Jake Godino.
"We will celebrate their careers and hopefully we will play well. As I said to them the other night, you're not going to remember walking out there with your family for the next 40 years, but you will certainly remember how you played in your last home game at the Liacouras Center. I want these guys to have good memories as they walk away from Temple University."
Temple and UMass will tip-off at 7:00pm on Wednesday night in North Philadelphia.
