Temple Would Be Perfect Landing Spot for Villanova Transfer Dylan Ennis

On his morning jog around his Villanova, Pa., neighborhood, Temple head basketball coach Fran Dunphy would be wise to make a two-block detour in the next couple of days and stop off at Dylan Ennis’ dorm room at Villanova University.

Dunphy knows by now that Ennis has expressed his desire to transfer to a school that needs a traditional point guard. It just so happens that Dunphy and Temple have a crater-sized opening for just such a player now that AAC first-team point guard Will Cummings has used up his eligibility.

Ennis and Temple would be perfect together. Ennis fits Temple’s biggest need and Ennis would not need to haul his belongings across the country to find another team; he would just have to move them across town. He will graduate from Villanova later this spring and be immediately eligible to play for his new team. He would be able to keep all of the friends he made at Villanova, while making new ones at Temple. Plus, it would provide an interesting symmetry to his career, playing his first season for the Rice Owls before transferring to Villanova. Playing for the Temple Owls would allow him to enter college basketball as an Owl and leave it as one.

More importantly, he would be able to pursue his stated goal of running the point. Ennis started all 36 games — averaging 9.9 points and 3.7 rebounds — for the 33-3 Wildcats at the off-guard position, but his ball-handling skills make him more suited to the one guard spot.

The Owls have just about everyone but Cummings returning from a 26-11 team that got robbed of an NCAA Tournament berth, and getting Ennis would not only ensure the Owls of a spot in next year’s big dance, but make them the pre-season favorite in the AAC and set them up for a deep March Madness run.

The Owls have been grooming Josh Brown for succeeding Cummings, but, in truth, Brown is more of a two guard than a lead guard. Getting Ennis would give Temple the luxury of moving Brown to a two and continuing his spot duty as backup point guard, a role he played behind Cummings this season. Ennis would no doubt get Villanova coach Jay Wright’s blessing to move across town because even though the Owls and Wildcats are rivals, Wright and Dunphy are best friends.

Dunphy, a great college guard at La Salle in his day, has a terrific track record of developing top-notch guards, including Khalif Wyatt, Juan Fernandez and Cummings, and any association with him would no doubt take Ennis’ game to another level.

In Dunphy, Ennis would be playing for a future Hall of Fame coach who won his 500th game in the AAC quarterfinals against Memphis, a game many of the bracket gurus thought clinched the Owls a spot in the 68-team field. Instead, a bittersweet deep run in the NIT followed with Temple eyeing better and better things next year.

Ennis is just the kind of player who would drive those already high expectations through the roof, and there is no coach he would be able to help more than the one who lives just a couple of blocks away from him now.

Mike Gibson is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.