Owls top Penn St. at the buzzer

The last time coach Fran Dunphy won an NCAA tournament game was in 1994, when a point guard named Jerome Allen starred in a Penn upset of Nebraska.

Almost exactly 17 years later, Dunphy — now at Temple while Allen is head coach at Penn— finally got his second March Madness victory thanks to another stud guard.

Juan Fernandez, a junior from Argentina, sank an 18-foot leaner with 0.4 seconds left to give the Owls a 66-64 win over Penn State in the West Region’s opening round.

“It might have been our time, that’s all,” Dunphy told the Associated Press after the game. “Just our time.”

The shot culminated a wild, back-and-forth second half that featured eight lead changes.

Seconds before Fernandez’s game-winner, Nittany Lions senior guard Talor Battle knotted the game with a gutsy three-pointer from well beyond the arc for three of his game-high 23 points.

But Fernandez, who also had 23, took matters into his own hands on the other end.

After receiving the ball at the top of the key, he dribbled to the right wing and then attempted to shake Lions guard Tim Frazier with a behind-the-back move, then a pump fake, then a juke right. Frazier wouldn’t budge.

Finally, Fernandez stepped through to the left, found an opening and drilled the off-balanced jumper.

Frazier chipped in with 15 points, five rebounds and seven assists for Penn State (19-15), while senior forward David Jackson added 14.

Both teams entered Thursday searching for their first tourney win since 2001. The game — played in Tucson, Ariz., almost 2,000 miles from Pennsylvania — marked the 92nd time the two Keystone State teams have met.

The Owls defeated the Lions for the 59th time to advance to a third-round matchup with No. 2 seed San Diego State. Thursday, the Aztecs cruised to a 68-50 win over Northern Colorado.

The last time Dunphy and Steve Fisher, coach of SDSU (33-2), faced off was in 1990-91, when Fisher’s Michigan team blew out Penn, 84-62, in both coaches’ second season with their respective programs.

Dunphy went on to win 10 Ivy League titles in 17 years with the Quakers, but lost seven of eight NCAA tourney games. He was previously 0-3 at Temple.

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