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Temple knew all about the youth movement at St. Joes that has provided so many sensational moves and acrobatic dunks this season.
The Hawks can have the highlights. The Owls will simply take another win.
Juan Fernandez and Ramone Moore sparked Temple from the opening tip as the Owls cruised past Big 5 foe St. Joes for a 78-60 win at the Liacouras Center on Saturday afternoon, their 10th straight victory in the series.
Thats one of the tough things about playing St. Joes, especially now, you always want to keep it that way, Fernandez said of the Owls recent dominance over their city rivals. But we know that they know what the streak has been lately, and you expect them to take pride and try and reverse that. Later on were going to have to go to their place and its going to be tough.
The only tough part about this matchup for the Owls (15-5, 4-2) was figuring out whether Fernandez (17 points) or Moore (21 points) would score the next time down the court.
Temples senior guard duo took control right from the start, executing seamlessly to give the Owls an edge. Fernandez scored 10 of the Owls first 12 points, and Moore scored eight points during a 10-0 run that put the Owls up 24-10.
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Its always important if you can get a lead from the start, Fernandez said. It always helps you if you know how to keep it up. It happened at Charlotte the other day. We started the game on like an 18-1 run and then it was sort of similar.
Its something we have to learn how to take advantage of, and look for who is shooting the ball well or who is playing well at the beginning. We have a lot of options and we have to do a good job of realizing that.
The Owls led 38-24 at halftime and in the second half were up by as many as 28. Fernandez (7 for 9 from the field) and big man Micheal Eric (11 points on 5-for-7 shooting) set the tone for a 60 percent shooting effort for the game.
In the beginning of the game Juan came out firing. In the huddle we were saying we were going to get him the ball," Moore said. "Then, I caught fire as well. We got to give credit to Mike, coming out being prepared, stepping in right away. He was a big key this game. No, it wasnt planned like that."
What was planned was the Owls sticky defense. They forced the Hawks into several miscues, while locking down guards Carl Jones (five points) and Langston Galloway (seven points).
We talked about it all week, Fernandez said of stopping the Hawks backcourt tandem. We know theyre the two best scorers, theyre really good players. I think weve been doing a good job lately of having big guards who can take up a lot of space on defense. We got guys smart enough to get steals or tips, and I think weve been doing a good job. Then, we have those big guys down there like Anthony Lee and with Mike back, who bother shots every time we get beat.
I think we can still get better, but our defense has been as good as it has in a while and we got to keep it up.
I thought our defense on the perimeter was good, Temple head coach Fran Dunphy said. I thought we talked well. We were aggressive on it, we switched well. We denied well when we needed to.
The Hawks (13-9, 3-4) never got their offense rolling and the few eye-popping displays above the rim they did manage to pull off were not enough to dent the deficit.
Even that final score doesnt indicate how we were dominated, but they dominated, Hawks coach Phil Martelli said.
That was not really much of a contest. It wasnt individual. I just said that to the players. We got waxed, not an individual guy lost his matchup. When you play Dunphs teams, thats what youre really playing, youre playing a team concept and not the individual concept.
The rest of that team finally joined in the action during the second half to really put the game out of reach.
Temple blitzed St. Joes with a 14-4 push after intermission, highlighted by Temples own aerial show when Lee threw down a vicious dunk off an alley-oop pass from Khalif Wyatt.
The bucket gave Temple a 22-point advantage to signal the rout and send the second-largest crowd ever at the Liacouras Center wild.
Even with the huge win and recent history between the two teams though, Dunphy is leery about ever counting out a city rival.
Overall, Im very pleased with our performance today, he said. I like St. Joes team and I like their balance as well. Weve got to go back there in a couple of weeks and they will be more than ready.E-mail Matt Haughton at mhaughton@comcastsportsnet.com