Temple favored again in Atlantic 10

NEW YORK - Fran Dunphy was still en route to the Chelsea Piers yesterday when Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli said the Temple coach wanted to let everybody know about Dunphy's new TV show - "Boardwalk Empire."

Seems a pretty good title for what Temple has done in Atlantic City during the last three Atlantic 10 Tournaments. The Owls have won them all.

Temple, with senior Lavoy Allen and junior Juan Fernandez, was picked by the A-10 coaches and several media members to win the 2011 championship. The voting was not close.

Fernandez will move to the point. And Allen is simply the rock of the program. It is no coincidence that when he arrived on campus, those championships followed.

"He's really low-maintenance," Dunphy said. "He was really well-coached in high school."

Dunphy loves to tell the story of how he was describing the proper method to hedge a high ball screen. Allen promptly did it even better than the explanation.

"My next instruction to all the guys behind him was 'See what Lavoy did. We're all going to do that,' " Dunphy said.

What Allen will not do is change his personality.

"Everybody wants Lavoy to be a more dynamic guy, off the court, on the court," Dunphy said. "They want him to act like he's Tyler Hansbrough, that kind of unbelievable intensity in playing. That's not him. Yet, what he's going to give you is pretty much a double-double each and every night out."

If Temple has dominated the tournament, Xavier has dominated the league. "X" has won or shared the last four regular-season titles. It has won its last 32 A-10 home games. And it is one of only two schools in America to reach the Sweet 16 each of the last three seasons. Michigan State is the other.

When Dunphy was asked whether he would trade a few of those A-10 titles for some of Xavier's seven NCAA wins, he readily acknowledged he would.

There was a lot to talk about during yesterday's A-10 Media Day at the CBS College Sports Studios on the lower west side of Manhattan. There was the matter of Temple sustaining its excellence, and of La Salle and St. Joe's trying to find a way to get nearer the top of the league standings than the bottom. La Salle, playing its first season in five without Rodney Green, was selected ninth and St. Joe's 12th in the preseason poll.

La Salle's 2009-10 season was ruined by an unprecedented run of injuries to key players.

"That was a 5-year building process," Explorers coach John Giannini said.

Each season, La Salle had gotten better. Last season was going to be the payoff. Then, it wasn't.

The coach, however, does not see the program as starting over. He likes his talent on the wing and the very talented sophomore big man Aaric Murray. He especially likes freshman point guard Tyreek Duren (Neumann-Goretti).

"Tyreek is a very special point guard," Giannini said. "He's an absolutely pure player at that position, he handles the ball, he has a feel for the game."

St. Joe's lost 20 games last season. It was not a fluke. The Hawks simply did not have enough talent.

"I was responsible," Martelli said. "I made some mistakes in recruiting, and I made some mistakes in evaluating."

The Hawks really are starting over, with half the roster new to the program.

"They don't even know what drill is called," Martelli said. "There was a level of pain with losing 20 games. There is a lot to be earned here."

How all the new Hawks will adapt to the college game will be learned from November to March. How La Salle's talent meshes also will be learned over time. And, in March, we will all find out whether the Temple Boardwalk Empire is still on the air.

Temple's Lavoy Allen was named to the preseason first team. The Owls' Juan Fernandez was named to the second team and La Salle's Aaric Murray to the third team . . . La Salle's John Giannini said freshman guard Cole Stefan recently suffered his third concussion in the last 6 months. A baseball player, he got hit in the head by a couple of pitches last season and recently took a hard fall playing basketball at La Salle. Giannini said freshman big man Matt Lopez (Washington Township, Sewell, N.J.) will redshirt . . . This is the youngest team in memory at St. Joe's, with only two seniors and one junior. C.J. Aiken and Langston Galloway were named to the preseason all-freshman team. Phil Martelli said it is unclear today which of his freshmen will have the most impact. The only sure starter, Martelli said, is senior forward Idris Hilliard. *