ATLANTIC CITY, Sat., Mar. 14 - It wasn't until the game clock signalled one minute to go Saturday night that Temple's arduous road to the postseason finally got easy. The Owls swept three games in three days last week to win a second straight Atlantic-10 tournament and the accompanying ticket to the Big Dance. True to form, they sealed the deal against Duquesne with hardly any room to spare, 69-64, at Boardwalk Hall.
The seventh-seeded Dukes (21-12, 9-7 A-10) had come from nowhere to outplay Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Dayton to reach the finals. As a fourth seed, Temple (22-11, 11-5) got a first-round bye, smoked Saint Joseph's Thursday, then put a shockingly effective defensive stranglehold on No. 1 Xavier Friday night, holding the Musketeers to season lows in points and shooting percentage.
There were relatively few fans in attendance for the title game, and fewer still were rooting for the Dukes. Temple sent the few die-hards sporting "DU You Believe" signs home disappointed by holding Duquesne below 50-percent shooting (43.1) for the first time in the tournament.
The other big winner was the A-10 itself, which squeezed three teams into the NCAAs for the second straight year thanks to a timely Temple surge. Xavier and Dayton nabbed at-large berths; the Musketeers are seeded fourth and will face Portland State in round one, while the 11th-seeded Flyers will contend with West Virginia.
Temple's Dionte Christmas grabbed the spotlight in the final two games and wouldn't let go. He scored 20 points against Xavier and went unconscious the next night, tallying 29 and providing the Owls' final oomph in a second half dominated by defense.
"Really profound offensive strategy," coach Fran Dunphy said. "Give the ball to Dionte and hope he makes a play."
Can that strategy work when the Owls face sixth-seeded Arizona State Friday afternoon? It's worked for the past five games.
Big 5 roundup. Saint Joseph's now owns an ugly 2-8 mark against Temple in the A-10 tournament. Meanwhile, La Salle was knocked out in the first round by St. Louis, 62-60, in overtime. The Explorers had reached the quarterfinals the previous four years.
Dissent in the ranks. Thirty out of 31 Division I leagues use a postseason tournament to determine their conference champions.
But not every coach is happy about that, and St. Louis's Rick Majerus is one of them. After his Billikens won their first-round game, he put a public-relations smackdown on the A-10 brass, telling reporters that the demands of a tournament force student athletes to become too much athlete and not enough student.
Majerus then went a step further, arguing that the A-10's system gives the regular-season champions a raw deal.
"I really believe that the regular season is everything," he said. "We aren't going to win this [tournament] and say, 'Oh we're the champs.' What a phony thing that would be. .The champs are the regular-season champs. That's the way life is."
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