Temple Will Try to Duke It Out With Best of Them

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. —  Duke has come to the point where it was turned away by Kentucky last season, one game shy of its 12th Final Four.

John Chaney, Temple’s raspy-voiced coach, is back for another attempt to reach his first, hoping to take the Owls there for the first time since Harry Litwack guided Temple to the Final Four in 1956 and 1958. His team will have to defeat heavy tournament favorite Duke today to do that.

“Without question, everybody would love to get to the top of the hill,” Chaney said. “For us, to say a team that got to the 64 is not successful would be wrong. To get there, you have to win a number of games.

“That will probably be my mark, even if I never make the Final Four, and I’d certainly like to get there. If I don’t get there before I retire, I’ll just know I’ve had some smidgen of success and helped some young men.”

Duke stumbled in the South Regional final last season as Kentucky came from 17 points behind in the final 10 minutes to win, 86-84.

“I remember looking up at the scoreboard, seeing Duke on the losing side,” forward Shane Battier said. “And then driving away through the gates of the stadium. It was tough. Real tough.”

To drive away from the East Regional and on to the Final Four in St. Petersburg, Fla., Duke will have to overcome Temple’s matchup zone defense.

With six three-point threats, from Trajan Langdon, William Avery, Chris Carrawell and Battier among the starters and Corey Magette and Nate James off the bench, top-seeded Duke (35-1) has shooters to do it.

“No question about it, we have to hit our shots,” Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “I think if you try to quick-shoot, it won’t work. You have to work to get open shots. They’re really good defensively. You have to shot fake, penetrate, kick it out.”

Langdon agreed.

“This zone is different than a lot of other zones,” he said. “They don’t give you open looks. Instead of one or two passes, you have to make maybe six or eight passes, maybe penetrate to get an open look.”

No. 6-seeded Temple (24-10) relies on its defense, and the Owls shot almost 53% in their 77-55 victory in the regional semifinal over Purdue--only the third time this season they shot better than 50%. Chaney thinks his team better not count on it happening again.

“We have to feed off our defense. Our defense has to be real good against Duke to hold us and keep us in the ballgame,” he said, adding that Duke’s ability to penetrate against the zone concerns him.

“It used to be you beat a zone with ball movement and man movement,” he said. “Duke beats you with the split and spread. They just kill you with that over and over. So dribbling through zones has become very fashionable. And our players have not been able to contain anybody who splits.”

Nevertheless, the Temple players say they have no fear. Matter of fact, they’re tired of hearing about Duke, the heavy favorite to win it all.

“Really, really tired,” Temple guard Pepe Sanchez said. “I’m not here to play against Duke. I’m here to get to the Final Four. It’s bigger than Duke. All respect to Duke, they’re a great team. But we didn’t reach this point to say we’ll be scared of Duke. We’re not afraid of Duke.”