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A year ago, the Temple basketball team being snubbed by the NCAA tournament committee on Selection Sunday turned out to be the biggest surprise of the day.
The Owls took that snub personally to earn a surprise of their own on Sunday — the American Athletic Conference outright regular season title — and that should be more than enough to make them a lock for this year’s NCAA field of 68, even if they stub their toes in the AAC tournament this week. The Owls were picked for sixth; they finished first, and that probably means a second-straight Coach of the Year Award for Fran Dunphy. Temple’s players had to sit in front of the TV last March, listening to advocates like ESPN commentators Dick Vitale and Andy Katz protest when the Owls did not get into the field, and then had to listen to members of the selection committee give their own reasons why. Even though Temple had beaten a No. 2 seed, Kansas, by 25 points, the committee said the Owls were left out because of their poor record against the top teams in the AAC.
With that information in hand, the Owls went about doing what the committee asked. In their only meeting with SMU, the Owls beat the then No. 8 team in the country, 89-80. They won at Cincinnati and at UConn, when both of those teams were ranked in the top 25. They then held serve by winning home games against both the Bearcats and the Huskies, completing an impressive sweep. They also won at Houston and found themselves alone atop a very tough conference over the grueling haul of a four-month season. Nothing that happens in the next week should change that.
In other words, they did everything the committee asked them to do and now all they are asking the committee to do is to be consistent. If failing against the top conference teams was a reason to be excluded, the Owls should have already punched their ticket to The Big Dance for dominating them this season.
The selection committee owes them that much.
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