Temple Hosts No. 10 Kansas Tonight

By Matt Leon

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- For the second time in three games, the Temple Owls will face a top-ten squad tonight as they welcome No. 10 Kansas to the Center.

The Owls are 7-4 this season. Back on December 14th they lost to #7 Villanova, 85-62. But they bounced back on Thursday with an 82-62 win over winless Delaware.

"I think we have done some good things," Temple head coach Fran Dunphy tells KYW Newsradio. "We have done some other things that we can't do in order to be a little bit better of a basketball team. I think we are improving defensively, but we have some room to move there. What we need to do is make better decisions on the offensive end and hopefully, with these two guys, who are arguably our best jump shooters, it will open some things up inside for us as well."

Listen to the entire interview with Temple's Fran Dunphy

The two guys Dunphy's talking about are transfer guards Jesse Morgan and Devin Coleman. Both players debuted for the Owls in that Delaware game. Morgan started and poured in 16 points in 25 minutes (on 6-16 shooting, including 4 of 8 from 3). Coleman played 10 minutes off the bench, scoring 9 points (3-6 FG from 3). Earlier this season, the Owls also had to work in another transfer, forward Jaylen Bond, after he missed the first couple of games with an injury. So Dunphy has had to deal with a lot of moving parts this season.

"The good part is that we've been able to play with each other in terms of a practice setting," Dunphy says. "The difficult part has been having to actually get them minutes during games. That's we had to at least go though on (Thursday) night (with Coleman and Morgan). And I thought we did okay with it, but still the challenge will remain."

The Jayhawks are 9-1 on the season and Dunphy says they are a typical Kansas team.

"I think (they are) very talented," Dunphy says. "In particular, they're probably young this year. But I have such great faith and trust in (Kansas head coach) Bill Self bringing his team along, and I think that's exactly what they're doing. They had a tough loss (72-40 back on November 18th) against a really good Kentucky team, obviously. Kentucky really defended them well. And then every other game they've made these strides, you can see young people making better decisions each and every possession. And they are just very athletic and very energetic."

Kansas is being led by junior forward Perry Ellis and his 13.3 points and 6.6 rebounds a game this season.

Tip off tonight in South Philadelphia is set for 7:00pm.

You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattleonkyw.

You may also be interested in these Sports stories: