BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
PHILADELPHIA - Let's see if I have this straight:
For winning the Atlantic 10's West Division, for finishing their regular season 22-4, for being ranked the 11th-best college basketball team in the country currently and judged one of the 25 best since before Christmas, the Xavier Musketeers got to play Temple in the A-10 quarterfinals.
A Philadelphia team, in Philadelphia.
What? Kansas wasn't available?
You know Temple. The Owls don't make one pass when 12 will do. They play something called a matchup zone which, from over here, looks like five sets of arms and elbows, blocking all the passing lanes.
Coach John Chaney is a beautiful man who has not succumbed to the notion that, to attract top players, you must play basketball as if you are training kids for the NBA. Chaney's players do not fastbreak; they try three-pointers only when they are obvious. They bore you to cheers.
They are patient, and this kills lots of opponents, mainly because patience is not a trait well suited to 19-year-olds. Compared to most quasi-amateur basketball teams now, the Owls play the game on Valium.
Nobody wants to play them. Ever. But there were the Muskies Thursday night, being systematically squeezed from the opening tip. Xavier lost, 69-62, to a Temple group now 6-2 against teams in the top 20.
The Muskies are already in the NCAA Tournament. Now, they'll wait until 6:30 Sunday night to see how the selection committee chooses to deal with them. This loss likely drops them to a fifth or sixth seed somewhere. Regardless, their first round NCAA game next week will be no more aggravating than this one was.
The Muskies were digging out all night. After 11 minutes, they were behind 22-6. And, as guard Gary Lumpkin noted, ''You can't fall behind by that many against Temple and expect to put on a show.''
''We let the (matchup) zone attack us,'' said Xavier's Torraye Braggs. Asked to explain, Braggs said, ''We fell asleep.''
Not hard to do against Temple. ''They get across halfcourt and make you play defense for almost the whole shot clock,'' Xavier guard Lenny Brown said.
The Muskies rallied in the second half. ''There was never any question our guys would make a fight of it,'' Prosser said.
You could argue the top-seeded team should do more than make a fight in its first-round game. You could also argue that Xavier should have been playing, say, Fordham.
The Muskies were motivated. They had felt slighted coming into the game. This is what we heard. Hadn't they been in the stands at the Spectrum Wednesday night, listening as Temple fans chanted ''Over-rated'' at them? Hadn't Braggs, their starting center, somehow been ignored as an all-conference pick? Fourteen points, seven rebounds a game, and not among the 15 best in the league? The Muskies guards let them down, something that doesn't happen much. Brown and Lumpkin made just four of 17 three-pointers. One was Brown's swish from the right wing with 28.7 seconds left, to lift the game into overtime.
That only extended Xavier's aggravation five minutes. When Lamont Barnes made a falling-down backwards shot in the lane, and was fouled, with 38 seconds left, Temple led 67-62. Prosser hollered for a walking call, but he wasn't going to get it.
Xavier didn't make enough big shots to win. The Muskies were beaten to too many rebounds. Basically, they looked as bad as Temple wanted them to look. When the Owls are playing well, this happens to their opponents a lot.
Maybe we should just call them Tempo. Because if you succumb to theirs, they will win most of the time.
Call Paul Daugherty at 768-8454.