Rich Hofmann | Owls see how they measure up against one of the best

WITH 8 MINUTES to go last night, the Temple Owls trailed the Duke Blue Devils by eight points. That the Owls were shooting 27 percent at the time and already had committed 18 turnovers lent a veneer of the unlikely to the moment, but there they were, back from a 19-point deficit - banging around, hanging around, kind of (with an emphasis on the kind of).

"We'll watch the film and say, 'If we make this play and we don't make that foolish mistake, we're a little bit closer when we make our run in the second half,' " Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. "And, so, that's what we'll concentrate our efforts on . . .

"Somebody said, 'We didn't quit, we kept hanging in there at the end.' Well, they give you a scholarship to do this stuff. There's no quit. Nobody should ever think about quitting. You should be plugging away on each and every possession.

"There's some positives to take away from it, but there are also some things we just can't do if we're going to play at this level."

No medals for trying, then - which is pretty much what you would expect from Dunphy, pretty much the way you would want it. The Owls ended up losing to the No. 9 team in the country, the 12-1 Blue Devils, by a 74-64 score.

The Owls are what they are, young at point guard (sophomore Luis Guzman starts) and searching for some effective size (although 6-9 freshman Lavoy Allen is coming along). In Dunphy's second season, they lean so heavily at the offensive end on Dionte Christmas (23 points last night) and Mark Tyndale (20 points) that you wonder sometimes how the team keeps its balance.

Banging around, hanging around, they are 6-7 - which isn't bad, considering they started out 0-3. But the expectations are high and they start with the coach, who also happens to be the quintessential basketball realist, a guy who has seen everything more than twice and who has never really been able to do the sugarcoating thing and who doesn't even try.

"I think we're OK," Dunphy said. "I think we have a chance to be a pretty good team. I don't think we can be an elite team by any stretch. But we are in the soup here with our league [the Atlantic 10]. The league is absolutely fantastic . . . The league is absolutely way up and I'm proud of that."

Their next game is Saturday, at Charlotte. Last night, Charlotte won by 10 over Clemson, the nation's 19th-ranked team. At Clemson. After that picnic, the Owls play No. 25 Xavier. It really does just keep coming.