Temple With Key Conference Game Tonight At Tulane
By Matt Leon
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- The Temple Owls will look to stay hot tonight as they visit Tulane looking for a sixth straight win.
After beating Central Florida last time out on Sunday, 84-78, Temple sits at 11-4 for the season (2-0 in the American Athletic Conference).
"Well anytime we can win games you're feeling good, there's no question about that," Temple head coach Fran Dunphy tells KYW Newsradio. "I thought we had some really good moments in the UCF game. We certainly need to tighten up a number of things, including just stretches of games where we kind of don't have the focus that we absolutely need, but I think everybody fights that, and that's something that we'll work on as we move forward."
Listen to Fran Dunphy with KYW's Matt Leon:
This surge, which includes wins over now #12 Kansas and defending national champion UConn, has the Owls knocking on the door of the AP Top 25. Temple picked up 33 points in this week's poll as they entered the "others receiving votes" category.
"I think it's good for everybody surrounding the program," Dunphy says. "For us as an individual entity, as a basketball program, we need to continue grow, we need to get better. We need to get better every single day and make the best decisions out on the court. We need to be good teammates with one another and really respect what's going on about the game. And again, understand how tenuous and fragile these things are because you could lose a game and then nobody's talking about you."
Tonight the Owls will face a Green Wave team that is 11-3 overall and 2-0 in the AAC.
"They're playing very well," Dunphy says. "They had a great win at Memphis the other day (74-66 on Saturday), so that certainly gets your attention."
Tulane leads the American in scoring, they average 70.3 points per game, and Dunphy says that is no accident.
"Terrific guard play," Dunphy says. "They run really good offense, so that's going to be a great test for us. We've got to keep people in front of us, they're shooting the ball well. They run really good sets so we have to have great communication on the defensive end."
Temple and Tulane will tip-off at 7:00pm tonight down in New Orleans.
You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattleonkyw.
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