Tyndale's big shot, Hawks forwards' big fumble

Just as Cornell is the first team in the NCAA Tournament, Penn is one of the first teams out of it.

Normally Big 5 fans have someone to follow once the Quakers lose, but with three Philly teams in the bottom half of the top 100 in the RPI, there's a very good chance no one from the City of Brotherly Love will be traveling for the Tournament.

Barring a title in the Atlantic 10 Tournament (or at least reaching the final), Temple may have just ended Saint Joseph's tourney hopes. The Owls led for 20 seconds against St. Joe's, but did at the only time that matters, topping the Hawks, 57-56.

Temple was down by as many as 14 in the second half, but Mark Tyndale scored 13 second-half points, and his last two were the most important of the game.

After a flare screen failed, Temple gave the ball to Tyndale for an iso on Garrett Williamson, usually a good defender, and with 25 seconds left Tyndale effortlessly blew past him for the easy layup.

His defense was peculiarly bad, but I would not blame him, but instead Ahmad Nivins and to a lesser extent Rob Ferguson for the final shot that took the lead for Temple.

While Tyndale was at the top of the key, Nivins was hugging his man, Sergio Olmos of all people, on the opposite low block, while Ferguson was at the high post. Tyndale drove past Williamson in an instant, and Nivins was a half-second too late to block or even seriously contest the shot.

“I think I caught Garrett with a good move because he’s a great defender,” Tyndale said after the game. “They did a good job of putting their best defender on me at the time. I just made good move.”

On the next play, the forwards would miss another gimme to help out a teammate after a mistake.

You know when you yell "same team" when two guys go for a loose ball? If someone said that loud enough to St. Joe's, they probably would have won the game.

Ferguson and Nivins both grabbed for the ball with two seconds left, wide open under the basket -- as three Owls left the lane to block Tasheed Carr on his last-second effort from 14 feet away on the baseline -- but the ball squirted up in the air and was slapped away by Temple and the Owls took the victory.

And just like that, the team that had an RPI of 51 before the game may have let its chances of making the NCAA Tournament slip away.