The Owls earned a silver medal with a time of 5 minutes, 44.83 seconds, coming in behind Purdue's gold-medal time of 5:42.59.
The event used to belong to Temple. The Owls won 13 in a row from 1989 to 2001 and had taken first in 20 of 22 races until they lost in 2004 to Michigan.
Last year, Marietta stole Temple's crown. Yesterday, the Boilermakers did the Owls in.
Temple coach Gavin White loathes this trend.
"The thing that concerns me the most is that we've gotten used to losing," White said. "It's hard to break that cycle. It's the same with winning. It was where we were bigger than life to a lot of these teams. Now it's like, 'Whose turn is it to beat Temple this year?' "
Like his rowers, White was certain that this was the year the Owls would return to the top. Temple entered with confidence after beating Marietta, Purdue and Florida Tech - which were all in yesterday's final - at the SIRA Regatta in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Owls came in second to Virginia there last month.
Strong performances seemed to indicate they were ready for yesterday's race.
"I would have bet my house we would win," White said.
Temple seemed to be in trouble nearly from the start.
Purdue took a quick jump on the Owls, which some of the rowers said rattled them.
"The boat was flopping all over the place," said freshman stroke Pat Curran. "No one was together. It was panic mode most of the race. . . . Guys started trying to pull the boat by themselves instead of working together. It just wasn't good."
By the time the rowers reached the Columbia Avenue railroad bridge, Curran said, he knew the Owls were in trouble.
"I started getting scared at the bridge because I couldn't even see [Purdue] out of my peripherals anymore," he said.
The Owls closed the gap near the end, but there was not much left that they could do at that point.
