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Owls advance to conference tournament

TEMPLE'S doomed baseball team has at least three games left. The program, one of four being eliminated by the university effective July 1 due to athletic budget cuts (men's gymnastics will continue at the club level thanks to a fund-matching pledge by Board of Trustees member Lewis Katz, co-owner of the Daily News)

    by MIKE KERN
    Published 

TEMPLE'S doomed baseball team has at least three games left.

The program, one of four being eliminated by the university effective July 1 due to athletic budget cuts (men's gymnastics will continue at the club level thanks to a fund-matching pledge by Board of Trustees member Lewis Katz, co-owner of the Daily News), has been playing since 1927. Despite losing a bunch of key players who opted to transfer following the December announcement, the Owls have advanced to their conference tournament for the first time since 2008, when they were still in the Atlantic 10.

Picked to finish last in the preseason poll under third-year coach Ryan Wheeler, they are the sixth seed in the inaugural American Athletic tourney, which begins Wednesday at Clearwater's Bright House Field, spring-training home of the Phillies. They will open against 16th-ranked Houston, the third seed, at 3 p.m. The Owls just played the Cougars twice at Campbell's Field in Camden, beating them on Thursday (4-1) to clinch a playoff berth before losing on Saturday (7-5).

The Owls (14-30, 9-14) are in Pool B, along with No. 2 Central Florida (34-22, 17-7), Houston (41-14, 14-9) and No. 7 Connecticut (26-29, 9-14). They'll face UCF on Thursday at 7, and UConn on Saturday at 11 a.m. The Owls lost all three games against UCF in Orlando in March, and beat UConn two of three on the road in April.

The winner of each pool will meet in Sunday's noon championship game on ESPNU. Sixth-ranked Louisville (43-13, 19-5), the regular-season champ, is the top seed in the other half of the bracket. The team that lifts the trophy gets an automatic bid into the NCAA field, something the Owls haven't done since 2001. But wouldn't that be some kind of way to go out.