Temple basketball beats Siena

It was a painful exercise, but Fran Dunphy thought it was necessary, so the Temple coach gathered his players and made them relive Thursday's gut-wrenching one-point loss at Georgetown by making them watch it on tape.

During the review, Dunphy pointed out what they should have done here and what they could have done there.

"We tried to exorcise it by watching every minute of the game, saying, OK, here's a play we could have made, a defensive stop we had to make," Dunphy said last night. "We talked about it enough, but we knew this would be a very tough, hard-fought game and it was. It was survival at the end."

Dunphy was referring to tough Siena, the Owls' opponent last night in a Philly Hoop Group Classic game at the Liacouras Center.

The Saints went into the game on the cusp of cracking the Associated Press top 25 for the first time since Dec. 15, 1953. Coached by former Penn standout Fran McCaffery, the Saints are aggressive, quick, well-drilled, and voracious on defense. They had won 27 of their previous 32 games and have basically the same group that scared the daylights out of Louisville in the second round of last season's NCAA tourney.

But instead of giving away a victory, as it did against Georgetown, Temple outfought Siena, 73-69, in a game that was played at a high level, especially for so early in the season.

"I'd said before they are the best passing team I've seen," said McCaffery, whose Saints are favored to win the MAAC for the third straight season. "They don't beat themselves."

Temple (2-1), which shot 50.8 percent, had several players come up big at the biggest moments, but the two who stood above the rest were a pair of sophomores - Juan Fernandez, who scored a career-high 20 points, and Ramone Moore, who came off the bench to score 16 while displaying the potential to be a star.

Fernandez made four three-point shots, three in the first half that helped keep Siena from building an insurmountable lead. In the final minute last night, Fernandez drove the lane to give the Owls a 70-67 lead with 44.2 seconds to go.

"He never got into a great rhythm against Georgetown, but he got into a great rhythm tonight," Dunphy said of Fernandez, who is a slick passer. "Without him making jumpers in the first half, we were in trouble."

Dunphy wasn't thrilled with the way Moore began the game, and he told him about it.

"I got on him a little bit early on because his first play in the lane in the first half was so unassertive," Dunphy said. "He can't be that way. He has to do a good job of being strong and tough and very assertive and I thought he did that certainly in the second half."

Siena lost despite terrific performances by a couple of former area high school stars - senior guard Ronald Moore from Plymouth Whitemarsh, and junior guard Clarence Jackson from Cherokee High.

Ronald Moore, who has blinding quickness with the ball in his hands, dealt out 12 assists, while Jackson scored 17 points.