Owls

KRISTEN McCARTHY had 11 points and 12 rebounds, Shey Peddy scored 13 and BJ Williams had 11 points and six assists, but Temple (2-2) dropped a 58-52 decision at Northern Illinois (2-1) yesterday. The Owls shot 34 percent from the field (3-for-15 threes), 65 percent from the free-throw line, and were outrebounded, 39-30. Temple heads to the Bahamas for the Junkanoo Jam Tournament over the Thanksgiving weekend, opening with sixth-ranked Texas A&M on Friday.  

Brittany Lewis scored 14 points to lead Temple in a 68-33 rout of Kent State in women's basketball action last night at the Liacouras Center. Kristen McCarthy and Shey Peddy added 13 points apiece in a game Temple (4-5) never trailed as it took a 32-12 lead in the firsthalf, despite shooting 3-of-19 from the arc and just 41 percent from the field. Itziar Llobet was the only player in double figures for Kent State (1-6), finishing with 13 points. Diamon Beckford added nine.

Derrio Green scored 26 points and hot-shooting Charlotte picked apart the normally stingy Temple defense in the second half, as Charlotte claimed a 74-64 victory in Atlantic 10 action last night. The 49ers shot a blistering 14-for-24 (58.3 percent) from the field in the game's final 20 minutes to pull away from the No. 15 Owls, who are now winless in four trips to Halton Arena. The loss ended a six-game winning streak for the Owls (17-4) and created a three-team logjam atop the Atlantic 10 standings, with Charlotte, Temple and Xavier all at 5-1. The Owls entered the game ranked among the nation's best defensive teams, but it was the 49ers who employed the lockdown defensive performance.

The Temple Owls received word yesterday afternoon that David Hawkins, who had been academically ineligible for the first semester, has been cleared to play for the second semester and will join the Owls for their game tonight against Alabama in the Jimmy V. Classic at the Continental Airlines Arena. Hawkins, who had been allowed to practice during the first semester, had averaged 10.4 points and 4.4 rebounds last season as a freshman, when he started 26 of 37 games. Owls coach John Chaney said through a spokesman that he would have no comment, other than that he would welcome Hawkins back on the team today.

Temple outlasted Central Connecticut, 72-70, last night at McGonigle Hall in a non-conference women's basketball game in which the Owls gave away a nine-point lead midway through the second half, and then took the game back in the closing minutes. The Owls (4-7) were leading, 51-42, with 14 minutes, 12 seconds left when the visitors went on a 20-6 run to go up, 62-57, with 6:26 to play. Then the momentum swung back to Temple, primarily because the Blue Devils (4-12) could not make free throws down the stretch.

Temple coach Fran Dunphy has decided to redshirt freshman forward Anthony Lee this season. A decision on whether to redshirt senior forward Craig Williams will be made after a few more games. "[With] Craig, we're still trying to decide how to handle him," Dunphy said Thursday. "He's still not healthy enough to play anyway, yet. And he has to, obviously, improve his conditioning. " Lee and Williams have missed all of 19th-ranked Temple's games this season. The Owls are 12-3.

Midway through the first half yesterday, Temple had raced out to a 28-12 lead. Seven minutes into the second half, the Owls had hit an astonishing 65.6 percent of their shots. When it was over, four Temple players had scored in double figures for the first time this season. In other words, this was a bad loss. As impressive as the Owls had looked early on, the Cincinnati Bearcats, working past some flaws of their own, exploited Temple's weaknesses and left Boardwalk Hall with an 80-71 victory.

The biggest surprise of the basketball season? That's easy. Temple is 2-0 against the NCAA. Two weeks ago, the Owls received word that Carlton Aaron, a 6-8 freshman power forward, was given the OK to play this season by the NCAA Clearinghouse. Now, the Owls have heard some more good news. Freshman swingman David Hawkins has been declared eligible to play immediately. Hawkins, a 6-4 product of Fort Washington, Md., signed with Tulane last November. When circumstances led him to seek a different school late this summer, he chose to enroll at Temple.

It took only 48 hours for Temple to make the short trip from the NCAA tournament bubble to the less-glamorous Atlantic Ten tournament "bye" bubble. The Owls started the trip with a home-court loss to La Salle on Thursday night, and finished it with a 70-65 loss to likely NCAA pick Dayton yesterday at UD Arena. In a must-win game for both teams, the Flyers, who had lost two straight, jumped to an 8-0 lead and were rarely threatened until a late Temple rally. Trailing by 60-44 with six minutes to go, the Owls made it a game with an 11-0 run. But Dayton (24-5, 10-4 A-10)

Bensalem coach Don Bogan believes that these things go in cycles. For the last three years, his senior-laden Owls won nearly three of every four games. Now, things have changed. The latest version of the Owls has players who are young and inexperienced, and Thursday, they were handed their ninth loss in 13 games, a 48-45 nonleague decision to Quakertown. "It was another winnable game," Bogan said. "I'm not going to keep saying we're young. These kids aren't freshmen anymore, because we're past the halfway point of the season.