Temple not shying away from being close to bowl eligibility: ‘We aren’t going to hide from it’

When coach K.C. Keeler held his first team meeting after he was hired in December, one thing he brought up to his new team was reaching a bowl game.

Temple had finished its fourth straight 3-9 season, so for Keeler to already be talking about reaching a bowl game seemed unrealistic. But that has been his mantra: Players have to be unrealistic if they want to play for him.

Ten months later and that unrealistic vision is very much real.

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The Owls’ 38-37 win over Tulsa on Saturday moved them just one win away from reaching bowl eligibility for the first time since 2019. Keeler said Monday that his team knows how close it is to reaching a bowl game.

The remainder of the schedule is not light for Temple (5-3, 3-1 American Conference), and its quest for bowl eligibility begins at home against East Carolina on Saturday (2 p.m., ESPN+). ECU (4-3, 2-1) has an explosive offense and is coming off a bye week.

“We’ve all talked about it and we aren’t going to hide from it. We know that this is a bowl-eligible game,” Keeler said. “The guys, when I mentioned that this morning in the team meeting, you can see they were already ahead of me. You can see that there is this energy that, yeah, there’s an opportunity to get to a bowl game. It would be a big deal for this program to get back to being bowl eligible.”

Tulsa gave Temple everything it could handle. The Golden Hurricanes had a two-point conversion try for the win in overtime, but the Owls defense got the stop to escape with the win. Keeler pointed out another response from his team that arguably changed the game.

The Owls had first-and-goal from inside the 5-yard line and a chance to go up 21-10 before halftime. Instead, they failed to score on their four attempts, and Tulsa marched 98 yards to score with three seconds left to take a 17-14 lead heading into the break. Keeler told his team to take a deep breath in the locker room, and Temple went out and recovered to sneak out the win.

“For us to come back after what happened at the end of that first half and find a way to win, I thought that was really impressive,” Keeler said.

The Owls were led by their offense in the second half, racking up 280 yards with 205 coming through the air.

Wide receiver Kajiya Hollawayne led the team in catches (10), receiving yards (85), and touchdowns (three). Tight end Peter Clarke added three catches for 71 yards as he continued his breakout season. The emergence of Hollawayne and Clarke has helped turn Temple’s offense into one of the conference’s best, Keeler said.

“We’ll match up with most of the people in the league in terms of putting those [offensive weapons] out there,” Keeler said. “And the offensive line keeps getting better, so all of a sudden, it’s a pretty complete offense. Which I don’t think people thought we would have going into the season.”

» READ MORE: Temple outlasts Tulsa in overtime to earn its fifth win of the season and third in conference play

ECU averages 293.6 passing yards, ranking third in the American. Keeler believes the Owls are about to play one of the best teams in the conference, and they need a win to be considered among the best themselves.

“When you look at the best teams in this league, you’re thinking South Florida, Memphis, Navy is having a great year, Tulane. We’re thinking East Carolina,” Keeler said. “That’s where they’ve gotten back to, and if we want to think that we’re in the upper echelon of this league, which is what we want to be, then that’s who you have to beat. That’s the mentality we have.”