A more confident Dingle emerges in Temple's opening win over La Salle

Daniel Dingle is not looking over his shoulder and it showed in his opening performance of his final college basketball season.

The redshirt senior swingman set several career highs in Temple's opening 97-92 Big Five overtime win over La Salle on Friday at the LIacouras Center.

Dingle had career highs in points (21), minutes (43) and tied a career high with five assists. This is from somebody who averaged 4.4 points and 20.5 minutes a year ago.

"This helps me definitely confidence-wise, coach trusts me," Dingle said. "This is my fifth year and I know the ins and outs of the program and my confidence is high."

After one game, so is his shooting percentage.

Dingle shot  7 of 11 from the field, 3 of 4 from three-point range and 4 of 5 from the foul line.

His previous career high in scoring was 15 points in a 63-58 win over visiting UConn on Feb. 11 of last year.

Dingle entered the season taking his role as one of the team leaders seriously.

"The young guys have to follow me and learn from my habits," he said.

Dingle said he learned from the veterans as he came up in the Temple program. He's not looking to be the leading scorer every night but simply to lead by example.

"Each game it determines who is having the hot hand, it just happened I hit shots today and the guys believed in me," Dingle said. "It was the right place for me to be successful."

Dingle says that he will take what the defense gives him and not force the issue.

"My role is going to change every game soI don't know who it will be on Monday," Dingle said.

Dingle was referring to the Owls next game, against visiting New Hampshire.

It very well could be Dingle who emerges as the Owls top scorer again, but he isn't worried about padding his statistics, only helping this young Temple develop at the fastest possible rate.