Uh and oh, right? With then-No. 3 Villanova’s 70-65 loss yesterday to then-No. 19/21 Pitt at the Petersen Events Center (aka the Pete), the Wildcats have now lost consecutive games for the first time since February 2008. They’ve also lost three of five overall. And, as Our Real Job story for p-burbs notes, it’s odd to see how quickly things have changed for the ‘Cats. Two weeks ago, they were a Final Four team again. Now, coach Jay Wright is getting hit with question after question about whether he’s concerned or what buttons he must push to get things right again. More after the jump.
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Some might be wondering how in the world this happened. After all, back on Jan. 6 up on North Broad Street, Temple treated Saint Joe’s like a high school team. The final was 73-46, and it stood to reason that something similar was going to happen when the teams met Saturday afternoon on 33rd Street. But the Palestra, and its ghosts, wound up having something to say about it. And by the time the smoke cleared, the 8,151 in the house were treated to One Of Those Games. More after the jump.
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The Dragons had won three of four and six of eight before last night’s 73-54 loss at VCU, a defeat that dropped Drexel into a tie with VCU for fifth place in the CAA. The Dragons got 20 points from junior guard Jamie Harris, who has coach Bruiser Flint’s vote for CAA player of the year, an award Harris is unlikely to win. And now, with just two league games to play after Saturday’s Bracket Buster game at Bradley, Drexel must play on without redshirt freshman guard Chris Fouch, who has a separated shoulder and could be out for the year. Fouch had recently been named the league’s rookie of the week and player of the week in the same week — the first Dragon to be so recognized. Drexel is now 15-13 overall, 10-6 CAA, and it likely needs to beat UNC-Wilmington and James Madison next week to be one of the four teams to earn a first-round bye at the CAA tournament.

Links: Harris has Flint on his side [Daily News]
Fouch goes where no Dragon has gone before [Drexel University]

The Owls’ most difficult game down the stretch was played Saturday, and it was remarkably easy. They made a school-record 68.6 percent of their shots and cruised to a 78-56 win over Rhode Island, which had come to North Broad Street with a 19-4 record, 7-3 in the A-10. Temple also made all six of its 3-pointers and both of its foul shots, with the Owls’ starters making 31 of 40 shots. Coach Fran Dunphy, as is his tendency, focused a bit on the 15 turnovers afterward, including the five committed by 6-11 sophomore forward Micheal Eric, who happened to score a career-high 19 points on 9-for-10 shooting.

But the bigger question, as just six games remain, is whether the Owls will lose another game between now and the start of the A-10 tournament. Of their remaining games, only St. Louis (16-8, 7-3) and Dayton (17-7, 6-4) have winning records in the league, and the Dayton game is at the Liacouras on Feb. 24.

Next up is Wednesday night’s game at St. Bonaventure (10-13, 3-7).

And so the Explorers play on, albeit with one foot on a banana peel. They announced Saturday that senior forward Yves Mekongo will be out two-to-four weeks thanks to surgery on a finger that was broken during practice on Feb. 8. Which brings to the number of injured senior La Salle starters to three: Ruben Guillandeaux went down with a stress fracture in his right foot just four games into the season, and Kimmani Barrett was lost to a broken foot after 15 games. As a result, Steve Weingarten, Parrish Grant and Devon White all had to log 30 minutes against Duquesne, and the Explorers turned it over 28 times (is that even possible?) and blew a 14-point lead en route to losing by 21. That’s right. Read that italicized phrase again.

Colin Dunlap of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has some audio of coach John Giannini and some other odds and ends here, and Ray Parillo of The Inquirer has Giannini’s reaction to this incredible string of bad luck on the injury front:

“It’s not a tragedy you see happen to people in real life,” he said. “But from a basketball perspective we’re definitely in the critical care unit right now.”

Now 11-13, 3-7 A-10, the Explorers are tied with George Washington and St. Bonaventure as the last three teams to qualify for the 12-team A-10 tournament. And next up is a road game Thursday at Dayton (17-7, 6-4). We’re kinda starting to think that if someone else gets hurt, Coach G will be giving us a ring to see if we have any eligibility remaining.

Links: Yves, you’re up to get hurt [La Salle University]
A look back at Duquesne 103, La Salle 82 [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
Another week, another injury for La Salle [The Inquirer]

Er, um, on second thought … hold those calls for the Quakers to go out and hire Steve Donahue. Penn really did beat No. 22 Cornell tonight at the P-spot, 79-64. And they did it by scoring 47 points in the second half. Jack Eggleston had 24 points on 8-for-12 shooting, while Zack Rosen had 22 points, six assists and three steals. The Quakers also made 11 3s and shot 56.3 percent overall. And we have no idea how any of it happened.

Link: Did we really write this earlier? [BIG FIVE POST]

With Penn set to host Cornell tonight at 7 at the P, there’s a lot of attention being paid to Steve Donahue (pictured), the Cornell coach, Delaware County native and former Penn assistant who has turned the Big Red into an Ivy League power. Cornell has won the Ivy the last two seasons, and this week the Big Red (20-3, 6-0 Ivy) are ranked No. 22 by ESPN/USA Today. Oh, they also have wins against Alabama, UMass, Saint Joe’s, St. John’s and La Salle, and they barely lost to No. 1 Kansas on the road back on Jan. 6. Which means they’re in contention for the Big 5 title with a win tonight, right?

Both the Daily News and The Inquirer published stories about Donahue today, but Keith Pompey’s report in The Inky notes that Donahue did in fact interview for the Penn job after Fran Dunphy left in 2006. He obviously didn’t get the gig, and we all know what happened from after that. Pompey, however, raises the question that’s on a lot of people’s minds with the Quakers now sitting at 3-15, 2-2 Ivy:

But what about next season?

Would he consider taking the Penn job if athletic director Steve Bilsky offers it?

“You know, when I’m in the season, it’s hard to [think about going] anywhere,” he said. “I’m so wrapped up in what we are trying to do here. It’s not something I even feel like commenting on.”

Translation: He didn’t say no.

Links: Donahue is from Philly (hint hint) [Daily News]
Donahue is from Philly, Part II (hint hint) [The Inquirer]
Photo credit: [Cornell University]

They held the Big 5 Hall induction luncheon back on Jan. 29, with Chaney, Rollie and Speedy all getting in. We’ve already remarked on Chaney’s and Rollie’s inductions, but we felt it was worth passing along Dick Jerardi’s Daily News story about Speedy Morris, too. Speedy is a Philly Guy through and through, and his early years at La Salle were marked by some of the school’s greatest successes — well, certainly the most recent anyway. It was fascinating to learn about Speedy’s humble basketball background, but even more to to get his thoughts on La Salle’s disastrous move out of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, which set the program back years:

“Why did we ever leave the MAAC?” Morris said. “I might still be there. We owned the MAAC.”

It’s certainly a question worth pondering, given the Explorers’ struggles ever since it happened. But 10 days ago, it was also worth pondering the collective impact guys like Speedy, Rollie and Chaney had on college basketball in this city. And on that day, anyway, that’s all that mattered.

After the jump, we’ve got video of a portion of Chaney’s all-over-the-place acceptance speech, which Jerardi had written about for the Daily News‘ Philly Hoops Insider blog here.
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From 1991-92 through 1998-99, the Big 5 wasn’t really the Big 5. Instead, during those eight seasons, the spectacle of the city’s five teams all playing one another in a given season was reduced to a lame, round-robin format in which everybody only played one game against two of the others, rather than against all four.

It was a time of great change, really. Conference affiliation was starting to matter. Television was taking over, if it hadn’t already. And financially, it made sense for schools — even Big 5 schools — to play as many home games as possible on campus, rather than at the P, because of the revenue advantages. As far back as the ‘86-87 season, in fact, both Villanova and Temple played their Big 5 “home” games in their own gyms. But with Villanova being in the gauntlet that was (is?) the Big East, the Wildcats — and their coach at the time, Rollie Massimino — did not want to have the bulk of their non-conference schedule loaded with games against city rivals. So they opted out. And for many, the bitterness has lingered ever since. The question, though, is how much of that bitterness was finally put to rest with Rollie’s induction into the Big 5 Hall of Fame last Friday?
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On Friday, former Temple coach John Chaney will go into the Big 5 Hall of Fame with an induction class that includes two of his coaching contemporaries, Rollie Massimino (Villanova) and Speedy Morris (La Salle). And today, the Daily News‘ Mike Kern wrote a feature about Chaney’s induction, the first in a series that will also cover Massimino and Morris. We have to say, however, that Chaney captured the magic of the Palestra in a way no writer in this town really could — by describing, of all things, what it was like when he went to the men’s room. Kern was wise to let Chaney do the talking, and after the jump, we have the quotes.
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