1982: M. Hoops beats Temple to little acclaim

Forget whatever you've heard about recent Big Five games. All those blow-outs were cheap imitations played by impostors. As of last night, the real Big Five is back. After 40 minutes of a tense, well-played game, Pennsylvania (8-9, 1-3 Big Five) came away from last night's City Series matchup with a 59-56 victory over Temple (16-5, 2-1). The win ran Penn's unbeaten string to five games, and extended the Quakers dominance over the Owls to four consecutive games. Although neither team ever opened up a lead of more than seven points, there were a few times during the game when there was a chance that Temple might run away from the Quakers. The first occurred at the beginning of the game, as Penn scored only six points in the first nine minutes of the contest. But good defense held the Owls to 13 points, and when David Lardner came in to spark Penn, the Quakers were still within striking distance. Lardner combined with Michael Brown to steal the ball from Temple off a full-court press and then got the ball to Willie Oliphant for a layup. He then proceeded to continue his hot shooting of recent games, and Penn was back in the game. "Dave opened it up," Brown answered when asked about Penn's offense. "That opened it up for Avery [Rawlings] in the middle." That it did, but the full effect of Rawlings being open would not be felt until the second half. Until then, Brown (13 first half points) and Lardner (10 points on 5-of-7 first-half shooting) combined to score 23 of Penn's 30 first-half points. One problem that the Quakers were having in the first 20 minutes was that Temple was getting numerous second chances. During the half, the Owls collected no less than 12 offensive rebounds, while Penn was only able to grab 12 caroms total before the break. In fact, Temple's Granger Hall (6 rebounds in the first period) and Charles Rayne (9 boards) alone out-rebounded the whole Penn team in the first half. A big part of Penn's ability to come back from a 32-30 first-half deficit was the fact that they took the offensive rebounds away from the Owls. In the second half, Temple grabbed only four offensive rebounds, with two of those coming in the final seconds. "We concentrated more on blocking our men out," said Rawlings of the second half. "That, and the guards had to work a little harder to block out Temple's guards." The fact that the Owl guards were no longer able to get to the medium-range rebounds was a big factor in the decrease in offensive rebounds. Another key part of Penn's second half surge was Rawlings. The junior center scored 12 second-half points (he had 14 for the night) on 4-of-7 shooting from the field and 4-of-4 from the foul line. That play was just part of the outstanding defensive effort that Little turned in. The junior captain began the night covering the 6'8" Hall, and then switched to Terence Stansbury in the second half. Playing man-to-man against Stansbury for much of the second half, Little limited the guard to 1-of-3 shooting. And still, even with Rawlings and Lardner (18 points for the night on 9-of-12 shooting) hitting their shots, and the Quakers playing good team defense, Temple would not let the game get away. In the end it came down to who would make the big plays at the end of the game. As it turned out, it was the Quakers.