I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on twitter @IRenkoHoops.
On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, two teams found themselves on the flip sides of a great victory and a mournful defeat that may have dramatically altered the trajectory of their previously divergent seasons. Only they were playing 14 miles away from each other, in two different arenas.
Coming into the season, most expected Xavier and Temple to go toe-to-toe for the Atlantic 10 title. Sure, some teams like St. Louis and even St. Bonaventure were lurking. But the Musketeers were a Top 25 team, and Temple came close in both polls, while none of the other A-10 teams even garnered a vote. If there was a date to circle on your calendar, it was February 11, when Xavier would travel to Philly to face Temple in their only meeting this season.
Did Khalif Wyatt and Temple Emerge From Wednesday Night as A-10 Favorites?
For much of the fall of 2011, it looked like the two teams had taken divergent paths. Xavier got off to a fast start, climbing into the top 10 on the strength of impressive comeback wins at Vanderbilt and against Purdue at home. Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons were touted — in this space, among others — as the best two-man backcourt in the country. Holloway earned serious talk as a potential National Player of the Year. Temple, meanwhile, lost the services of starting center Micheal Eric for six weeks after a knee injury four games into the season. The undersized Owls went on to post disappointing losses against Bowling Green and Texas. As late as last week, they were lucky to scrape by Buffalo at home and at Delaware. They dropped from a top 20 Pomeroy rating to outside the top 40, and St. Louis passed them by in the A-10 pecking order.
As 2011 crept toward 2012, the momentum started to turn in southwest Ohio. Xavier scored another big win on the court against Cincinnati, but a massive loss off of it as a result of post-brawl suspensions and media scrutiny. They lost their next three games, including an embarassing overtime defeat to Hawaii after both Holloway and Lyons had returned from suspensions. They stopped the bleeding with a win over Southern Illinois, but followed that up with a New Year’s Eve loss to Gonzaga on their home floor.
Still, Xavier started A-10 play on January 4 with a clean slate. They headed to Philly, not to meet the Owls, but their crosstown rivals LaSalle, a team that had won eight of nine but against entirely middling competition. This was an opportunity for the Musketeers to put 2011 behind them — the good, the bad, and the ugly — and start off the year and conference play on the right foot. On the same night, in the same city, Temple kicked off the new year by hosting Duke. Yes, that Duke. A perennial championship contender, a program as elite as any in the country, a top five team this year, one so good that the game had to be played at an NBA arena rather than Temple’s on-campus venue. You’d be forgiven for expecting Duke to roll over the wounded Owls, who after all had just barely managed to beat Delaware (no disrespect to Monte Ross’ squad).
But the new year had new ideas. Temple outplayed Duke over 40 minutes, putting forth arguably its best offensive performance of the season against arguably the best defense they’ve faced all year. The Owls shot 56.4% from the floor. Five players reached double figures, led by junior Khalif Wyatt’s 22 points. Wyatt’s back-to-back three pointers with just under five minutes to go — which pushed Temple’s lead from three to nine — may have been Temple’s biggest shots of the year. It was an offensive performance strong enough to overcome the inability to contain the Plumlee brothers on the interior as Duke’s big men combined for 33 points on 15-24 shooting.
Across town, Xavier punctuated its post-brawl implosion with a ten-point loss to LaSalle. After the first 12 minutes, it wasn’t even close. LaSalle went on a 22-6 run to close out the first half, and that was all she wrote. Holloway scored 15 points, but 11 came from the free throw line, as he shot just 2-12 (0-6 from three-point range) from the floor. Worse, Holloway and Lyons combined for eight turnovers — one more than the entire LaSalle team.
Was January 4 a genuine inflection point, putting Temple back on a path towards a conference title? Perhaps, especially with Eric due back later this month. But they won’t be able to wait that long to start making their mark in conference play, with big games against Dayton and St. Louis looming this week. Xavier’s turning point came earlier, with the brawl itself, but it wasn’t until this past Wednesday that their failure to recover from its after-effects put a dent in its A-10 title hopes. We don’t know yet what their trajectories will be the the next time Temple and Xavier play in Philly on the same night — and on the same court. But it may be that this time around it’s the hometown team who is the conference favorite, while the visitors look to reclaim a once-promising season.
After our updated, Xavier-less top 15, more on the week that was and the week that will be.
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