Unrealized potential

When I saw that Temple would get a shot at Duke this year, my first thought was that Fran Dunphy now had a shot -- for the second year in a row, but with a different team -- to knock off the Blue Devils in their own house.

Alas.

Dunphy's Owls were outplayed far more than his Quakers were last year as No. 5 Duke rolled to a 73-55 win that was no fun to watch. Because who wants to watch a team that has not yet played close to its best basketball?

Dunphy started behind the eight-ball on the recruiting trail. Then he lost two cornerstones in Mark Tyndale and Wayne Marshall to academics. Since then, the problems have come left and right, and the Owls' last few games displayed most of them.

7-footer Sergio Olmos was strong at the opening but quickly got into foul trouble and had to sit. Dion Dacons, who has been asked to play defense on the inside, gutted through 37 minutes with a bum foot and couldn't do enough. Tyndale, who has been back for six games now, still hasn't started and has yet to get back into the mix. (He started all 32 games last year.) And the absence of Marshall on the inside was easy to spot -- Duke exploited it to the tune of a 46-25 rebounding edge.

And even when Temple has shown flashes of brilliance, nothing has fallen into place. The Owls should have been trailing by just one point heading into halftime against Villanova last week, but they missed the front end of three straight one-and-ones. The Wildcats built a five-point halftime edge and never looked back.

Few things are less fun to watch than a team packed with talent that is held back by one or two missing peices. Dunphy jumped ship to Temple and moved up to the big leagues. I guess I just didn't realize how long it might take for the product on the floor to reflect it.