 Game Preview: La Salle Explorers @ No. 15 Temple Owls
Jan. 29, 2010 La Salle Explorers @ Temple Owls La Salle Explorers (11-9, 3-3) / Conference: Atlantic 10 For the third time this season, the La Salle Explorers will face a team ranked in the nation’s top 15 when it heads five miles down Broad Street to take on city rival No. 15 Temple at the Liacouras Center on Saturday. La Salle will play the final game of its current span of playing four road games in its last five. Philadelphia-based universities have seen elite competition this season. La Salle is one of only three teams in the nation to play two of the nation’s reigning top three teams (Kentucky, Kansas and Villanova). The other two teams that have also played two of these three teams happen to be Temple and Drexel. To date, the Explorers have had five opportunities in the last two seasons to unseat a ranked opponent. The last time La Salle was able to accomplish the feat was back in 2001 when it defeated the No.18 Saint Joseph’s Hawks. After Wednesday’s career-high 24-point performance at Fordham, freshman Aaric Murray will be looking to contend for his third Atlantic 10 Rookie of the Week recognition when he gets his first taste of the La Salle-Temple rivalry. In just 20 games, Murray has set the school record for most blocks by a freshman. With 10 games still yet to be played. Murray has an opportunity to put that record out of reach for quite some time. In four of the last five games, he’s been the team’s leading scorer while posting 20 or more points in three of those four occurrences. Now only 26 points shy of 1,000 points for his career, senior Yves Mekongo will look to be the 48th Explorer and the third player on current roster to eclipse the milestone. The possibility of Mekongo scoring his 1,000th point on Saturday is not all that much of a stretch, because ironically his career-high for points in a game is 26. When Mekongo reaches the pinnacle, it will be the first time since 1980 that La Salle has three 1,000-point scorers on its team. When the Explorers trailed at halftime at Fordham on Wednesday, senior Rodney Green had only two points at the break in his first game since posting a career-high 32 points against the Charlotte 49ers. To spark a turnaround in the last half, Green unleashed the power of his senior leadership by dropping 14 points on the Rams in the game’s final 20 minutes to help the Explorers pick up a road conference win. With 18.6 ppg, Green is second in the A-10 in scoring and still remains as one of two players in the nation to score at least 12.0 ppg and have 5.0 rpg. No. 15 Temple Owls (17-4, 5-1) / Conference: Atlantic 10 After falling to the Charlotte 49ers Wednesday evening at Halton Arena, Saturday will be the last time Temple will play in the nation’s top 15 before the new rankings are released on Monday. For the first time since 2001, the Owls are nationally ranked. Already this year, they’ve been the only team that has managed to beat current-No.3 Villanova. Entering the year, the Owls were projected to finish fifth in the Atlantic 10 Conference, just behind the La Salle Explorers. Now with more than two-thirds of the schedule completed, Temple is currently sitting atop of the A-10 while looking dominant doing so. Since taking over the helm of Temple’s men’s basketball program back in 2006, it’s always a reunion for head coach Fran Dunphy when his team faces La Salle. Dunphy is a 1970 graduate from La Salle, the school where he spent his college basketball playing days under former head coach and legendary-Explorer Tom Gola. With the departure of Dionte Christmas, Semaj Inge and Sergio Olmos, the Owls haven’t missed a beat and are actually looking to possibly three-peat as champions of the A-10. A new trio has emerged in the form of senior Ryan Brooks, junior Lavoy Allen and sophomore Juan Fernandez. Brooks is Temple’s leading scorer with 16.6 ppg, while being ranked second on the team and fifth in the conference in free-throw percentage as his team’s co-captain. After a stellar sophomore season, Allen is probably Temple’s biggest threat. For the year, Allen is one of three players in the A-10 to average a double-double (10.7 ppg and 10.0 rpg). In the first game against the Explorer last year, Allen dropped 21 points to help his team to a victory. Ever since Fernandez poured 33 points on Villanova, he’s been looked upon as on of Temple’s pivotal pieces. Fernandez has been his team’s leading scorer five times this season and has racked up a scoring average of 13 ppg. The Series Temple leads the all-time series 65-40. Saturday’s game between the Owls and Explorers will be the first side to this season’s home-and-home series and will be a preview for the Big 5 bout when these two teams dual it out again in Tom Gola Arena Feb. 28. This will be the third straight season in which La Salle and Temple will play each other multiple times within a season. In their most recent meeting, the Explorer defeated the Owls 70-63 at the Liacouras Center. With the win, La Salle halted Temple’s four-game winning streak in the series and clinched the runner-up spot in the Big 5. |
