While Temple came up short in its quest to deliver its second upset of a Top-10 team this season, this past week still belonged to Fran Dunphy and the Owls.
On Monday, with a victory over Bowling Green, Temple became just the sixth program in Division-I college basketball to reach 1,800 all-time wins. The Owls then went punch for punch with another one of those historic programs in an exciting Sunday afternoon showdown at Kansas.
Its no surprise, then, that Temple keeps its perch atop the citys power rankings while highlighting this weeks City 6 awards roundup.
Player of the week
Leading into Villanovas game against St. Johns this past Wednesday, one looming question was how point guard Ryan Arcidiacono would fare in his first Big East game.
Lets just say he passed the test with flying colors.
The freshman poured in a career-high 32 points and was on fire from three-point range, making seven of the 13 shots he attempted from long distance. He also went a cool 11-for-13 from the free throw line to help Villanova top St. Johns, 98-86, in its only game of the week.
Arcidiacono and the Wildcats have now won six straight, and his breakout game earned him Big East Rookie of the Week honors.
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Game of the week
The most impressive part of Temples performance in the hostile confines of Allen Fieldhouse? The Owls committed only four turnovers and made No. 6 Kansaswhich had won 62 straight home games against non-conference opponentsplay at its pace.
That resulted in Temple holding a four-point lead late in the gamea lead that eventually slipped away in a 69-62 loss.
But the game was still a very promising one for the Owls, who managed to stay in the contest against the senior-laden Jayhawks despite shooting 30 percent from the field and getting outrebounded by 15.
Play of the week
There were many plays from Temples loss to Kansas that showed the Owls poise and talentbut one in particular stood out.
Early in the second half, Khalif Wyatt outmuscled the Jayhawks Kevin Young for a rebound and made a smart, looping outlet pass to Will Cummings along the sideline. Cummings took a couple of dribbles and then fired a filthy bounce pass through traffic, splitting a pair of Kansas defenders and finding a streaking Anthony Lee, who slammed it home (despite Jeff Withey, who had nine blocks on the game, going for the swat).
That transition basket put the Owls within five with 16:41 left and helped start a run that would give them a late lead in front of a stunned Kansas crowd.
Quote of the week
Someone asked me yesterday how I feel at the midway point. How would you feel if your surgeon did a good job halfway through but slipped up a bit in the second half? It doesnt mean anything. You evaluate your season when its over and we have a long way to go.La Salle head coach Dr. John Giannini
Stat of the week
In La Salles 74-57 win over Penn on Saturday, the Explorers committed eight fewer turnovers than the visiting Quakers.
That should not have come as much of a surprise.
Looking at the stats nationally, La Salle ranks in the top 20 in Division-I in turnovers committed per game (11.3), while Penn (17.0) ranks 322 out of 345 D-I teams in the same category.
Games to watch this week
Atlantic 10 play opens up Wednesday with some good games as St. Joes hosts nationally ranked Butler, and La Salle hits the road to take on a 12-2 Charlotte team.
Temple plays its first conference game on Thursdaya difficult road matchup against Xavierand follows that up with an equally difficult home game against Saint Louis two days later.
Also on Saturday, Villanova goes to the Carrier Dome to face Syracuse, Penn opens Ivy League play against nemesis Princeton and La Salle hosts Richmond in its first A-10 home game.
Power rankings
1. Temple (10-3): Perhaps even better than another great big-game performance from Wyatt was how sophomore point guard Cummings controlled the game in Kansas. Cummings will likely need to be at his best once again for the Owls to emerge from a brutal opening week of conference play with wins over Xavier and St. Louis.
2. St. Joes (8-4): The Hawks move ahead of La Salle in the rankings, thanks to relatively easy road wins this past week over Drexel and Morgan State. St. Joes, which was the preseason pick to win the Atlantic 10, now heads into conference play on a three-game winning streak.
3. La Salle (10-3): Giannini was not happy with how his team fell apart in the second half of Wednesdays 76-59 loss to Miamithe Explorers first double-digit loss since the 2010-11 seasonbut was satisfied that they were able to bounce back with a rout of Penn in their final non-conference game of the season. The guards are good enough to carry La Salle to a lot of A-10 wins but Giannini will need his big men to stay out of foul trouble to compete for a conference championship.
4. Villanova (10-4): If nothing else, the future looks bright for the Wildcats, who have gotten strong play of late from Arcidiacono and fellow underclassmen JayVaughn Pinkston and Darrun Hilliard. But it will be interesting to see how those youngsters handle their first two Big East road games of the season (Wednesday vs. South Florida and Saturday at Syracuse).
5. Drexel (5-9): Just when it looked like the Dragons may have turned the corner, they took a step back, going 1-2 this past week. Bruiser Flints crew was hurt by an injury to Dartaye Ruffin, who was sidelined during the teams loss to St. Joes on Monday and win over Georgia State on Wednesday. Ruffin returned on Saturday but went just 0-for-4 from the field in a bad three-point home loss to Towson. Drexel returns to action Tuesday against Northeastern at the DAC before traveling to Virginia to take on James Madison on Saturday.
6. Penn (2-11): After beating the Quakers this past week, both Giannini and Butler coach Brad Stevens said Penn is on the verge of playing winning basketball. But right now its just hard to see, as the Quakers backcourt looks unable to break any kind of fullcourt press and the frontcourt is still suffering from the absence of leading scorer Fran Dougherty, who will be sidelined for at least two more weeks with mono. Penn has a very winnable game Tuesday at home against Lafayette, before an earlier-than-usual Ivy League matchup at Princeton on Saturday.
Dave Zeitlin covers college sports for CSNPhilly.com. Email him at djzeitlin@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DaveZeitlin