With Temple concentrating on senior guard Tim Begley for most of the night, the Penn men's basketball team knew it would have to find other ways to score against the Owls.
It did, and from two very unlikely sources.
Senior point guard Eric Osmundson scored a career-high 20 points, shooting 6 of 8 from beyond the arc.
Junior Friedrich Ebede provided a spark off the bench for the Quakers, as the athletic 6-foot-6-inch forward scored six points -- all in the first half -- and tallied three rebounds in only nine minutes of play.
And although the Quakers could not hold onto their lead at the end, Osmundson and Ebede made sure that the Quakers were at least in the game, and in control, until the final three minutes.
Osmundson was on fire from three-point land, as the Carlsbad, Calif., native made his first four long balls of the game. He wouldn't miss until three minutes into the second half.
Even with all his accomplishments, Osmundson was still modest after the end of the game.
"I could have hit those two free throws. Maybe if the ball didn't slip out of my hands the last time we would have got possession," Osmundson said, referring to his two missed foul shots in the first half and his turnover to Temple's Wayne Marshall with 43 seconds remaining.
Ebede's three-pointer with 9:43 left in the first half gave the Quakers their biggest lead of the game, 14-8. He later converted a three-point play the hard way, getting fouled on a dunk off an assist from Begley.
Both Ebede's and Osmundson's shooting performances were key in breaking down Temple's vaunted zone defense, which allowed the Owls to dominate the Quakers inside the paint.
"They obviously did a very good job on the offensive glass, which we did not do," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "But we anticipated that they would."
Penn was frequently forced to send the ball to the perimeter because of Temple's huge size advantage up front. But with Temple holding Begley to just eight points on 3-of-14 shooting from the field, it was up to the other Penn guards to pick up the slack.
Osmundson did that and more.
Because of Osmundson's shooting, Temple was forced to switch to man-to-man and triangle-and-two defensive schemes in the second half.
This opened up the Red and Blue's inside game, enough for them to secure a five-point lead with time winding down in the second half.
Even going into the game, the Owls were deliberately targeting Begley as the player to shut down.
"The assistant coaches did a great job on film ... we wanted to match up with him and keep the ball out of his hands," Temple junior captain Mardy Collins said. "If [Penn's] other guys were gonna beat us, that's what we were gonna live with."
Fortunately for the Owls, Penn's other guys were not able to beat them without double-digit scoring from Begley.
But they sure came close.
