Fran Dunphy on Riding the Subway and other Assorted Notes from Temple's 78-73 Win over Duke

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Milestones, Game Notes, Memorable Quotes and downloadable audio from Temple's 78-73 win over the Duke Blue Devils

Milestones— The win is Temple's fourth over a Top 10 program in the last four seasons (#8 Tennessee in 2008, #3 Villanova in 2009, #9 Georgetown in 2010, #3/5 Duke in 2012). Temple students rushed the floor on all four occasions. This is the sixth time the Temple student section has stormed a court over that stretch (three at the Apollo, two at Boardwalk Hall and now one at the Wells Fargo Center).
— This is Temple's first victory over Duke since their 59-58 win at the Spectrum on January 25, 1996. It snaps a nine-game losing streak to the Blue Devils. 
— Including Wednesday night, coach Mike Krzyzewski has only lost to an Atlantic 10 team twice in his storied coaching career. The other loss also came to Temple, as mentioned above.
— The Duke media notes have tonight listed as the team's "second true road game of the season." The team had seven home games, five neutral site contests and just one other road game. Given the split of the crowd and the fact that tonight was only the fourth-ever game Temple has played at the Wells Fargo Center, this could still be argued to have been a neutral site game.
— The win is Temple's first ever at the Wells Fargo Center. All three previous losses came to Duke.
— The announced attendance of 20,420 is the third largest crowd to ever watch a college basketball game at the Wells Fargo Center (Trails 1/21/06 Villanova vs. #20 Syracuse (20,581) and 2/13/06 Villanova vs. #1 UConn (20,859)).
Game Notes— Temple coach Fran Dunphy revealed postgame that Temple's number goal defensively was to shut down the Duke perimeter. Dunph admitted that Temple was okay giving up two-point field goals inside in order to limit Duke's ability to go on their trademark runs. The Plumlee brothers abused Temple inside with 17 and 16 each, but Duke's two leading scorers on the season—guards Austin Rivers and Seth Curry—were held to just 12 and 6, respectively.
— Duke looked like they had a real advantage playing both Plumlees, or at least a Plumlee and a Kelly, at the same time in the first half, but seemed to go with only one big for  stretches in the second half. Miles Plumlee, for example, finished the game with 17 points in just 19 minutes. He was called for zero personal fouls. Its tough to fault Duke for not pounding the ball inside late as they were down double digits on two separate occasions, necessitating strong guard play to respond to the barrage of three-pointers going down at the other end. At the same time, they were nowhere near as relentless as they could and should have been in the post on offense. Either way, its not hard to gather that Temple executed its game plan and that Duke was thrown off from what it wanted to do by that game plan. It really isn't a stretch to argue that for one night, the most successful head man in D1 history got out-coached, or, at the very least, that his team was out-played.

— Temple guard Khalif Wyatt led all scorers with 22 and nailed back-to-back threes 4:42 and 4:00 minutes remaining to put the Owls up six and then nine.
— Temple's largest lead of the game would come 54 seconds later thanks to a crafty Anthony Lee lay-in to put Temple up 11 with 3:06 remaining.
— Temple shot 56.4% from the field and 50% (5-10) from behind the arc. They had shot less than 40% from the floor over their last two games.
— Starting guards Juan Fernandez, Ramone Moore and Khalif Wyatt, who had shot just 31.5% combined during those two games, went 14-25 on Wednesday night.
— Temple scored 42 of its 78 points in the paint and 26 of their first half 35 in the same fashion. As all three of the aforementioned guards struggled with their jumpers against Delaware and Buffalo, Temple went to the basket early and often, stepping outside predominantly in the second half.
— The Owls finished the game with 20 points in transition to Duke's 6.
— This is the third straight contest in which Temple has recorded at least 13 offensive rebounds.
Meaningful Quotes— Coach K on the Temple Program: "They've won the Atlantic 10 three out of the last four years. We're playing a team that's...it's not a team we're playing. We're playing a program. Temple's always had a program with John [Chaney] and now Dunph. You're playing a tradition here. You're not playing a singular team. It was always had good kids with John and with Dunph who bought in to that tradition. Temple has one of the rich traditions of college basketball, and Dunph has continued to do that. So they're going to get good kids that believe they can win, and they do win." (ed. note: Temple basketball boasts the sixth most wins in Division I history.)
— Coach K on "if he saw a night like this coming": "If I saw it coming, I would have faked an illness, instead of getting ill during the game. To me, whenever that happens, the other team has the most to do with it. Congratulations to them and its an honor for us to play against this university and that coach and his team."
— Fran Dunphy on the Temple team taking the subway to the game: "The reason why we do it is because that's Temple. Over the course of Temple's lifetime, people would ride the subway to school. They would get out of the subway and go to class. They would get back on the subway and go to their part-time jobs in order to afford the education that they got, and then go home. And so, for us, it's kind of a tribute to all those Temple people who have done that over the years. That's who we are. We just wanted to let everybody know that we appreciate what Temple University is all about."
Audio Downloads
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski
Temple guards Khalif Wyatt and Ramone Moore
Temple coach Fran Dunphy

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