"I addressed that with the team, and we got a little bit off track," Golden said. "We started to take the poison last week and it almost cost us, and I hope we got them back on track. Because we have to be focused. If we start listening to other agendas, we're going to be in trouble."
The Owls' seventh consecutive win, a 34-32 decision over Miami (Ohio), required a last-minute field goal by freshman kicker Brandon McManus. Golden can only hope that scare gets his team back into the us-against-the-world mind-set that turned the Owls' season around.
It began, as usual, with disappointment. The Owls lost their season opener to Villanova - a game scheduled with the good intentions of building a local rivalry. Then the Owls lost, as always, at Penn State.
Any other Temple team - every other Temple team in memory - would have folded up right then. An 0-2 start? Same old Temple. But Golden noticed something at that critical juncture.
"It wasn't until we took the bus ride back from State College that I could see it in our team," Golden said. "I could see they had more success physically against Penn State, as opposed to the coaches manufacturing a play here or there or a trick play."
The Owls haven't lost since.
"The biggest reason why the kids didn't fold is because they finally had invested so much into it that they weren't willing to let it go," Golden said. "Up until this year, we weren't quite to that point where we would invest, where we would make ourselves vulnerable enough to risk it all. And finally, we got to the point this year where the guys invested every ounce of energy they could all year round and there's no way they were going to let it go.
"There's just no way."
