By Paul Gotham
As Juan Fernandez, Ramone Moore and Khalif Wyatt go, so, too, do the Temple Owls.
The trio churns outs points at a pace not seen along North Broad Street since Mark Macon and Howard Evans led the Cherry and White to the 1988 Elite Eight.
At the root of Temple’s success is an understanding that extends from coach Fran Dunphy on the sidelines to his players on the court.
“All three of those guys in the back court have a huge IQ,” Dunphy said after Temple’s recent win at St. Bonaventure. “They know the game. We’re not sitting there, to be honest with you, on the bench and calling out plays. We don’t do that because I trust all three of those guys to make good decisions.”
The three fill complimentary roles on the floor. Fernandez, the point guard, possesses an uncanny ability to slow the game to his speed while he picks apart opposing defenses. Moore quietly slips in and around the court waiting to capitalize on the slightest of openings given by the opposition. Wyatt’s fearlessness serves as a foil to his stealthy back court mates.
“We’re not a team that has a multiple-set kind of thing,” Dunphy explained during Monday’s Atlantic 10 tele-conference. “We’re really more a reader of the defense than running sets, and it just plays in to how these guys know the game.”
“It’s a combination of three guys who have been together for a while now,” Fernandez noted. “We can score and pass the ball at the same time.”
“We have three experienced guards,” Wyatt added. “We’ve been through a lot of situations. We all understand the game and how to manage the game.”
Temple’s 15.4 assists per game rank in the top 30 nationally with an accompanying assist to turnover ratio of 1.3 sitting 22nd in the country.
“They know when to call a big out to set a screen for them,” Dunphy continued. “They know how to use a screen. They know when their guy should be slipping screens. At some point you have to reward that trust and let them go on their own.”
“It’s been great,” Fernandez said of Dunphy’s relinquishing of control. “It gives you a great amount of confidence to know that your coach trusts you with the ball on the court.”
Fernandez, Moore and Wyatt totaled 52 points in Temple’s recent 76-70 win over the Bonnies.
“Those are three of the best guards in the country,” St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt said.
Fernandez scored 16 while handing out four assists to go with four steals all while running an offense that turned over the ball just eight times in the road win.
“It’s the combination of a few things,” said the Temple point guard. “Being together for a while now, he knows me pretty well, and I kinda know what he wants out there. With ‘Mone and ‘Lif he has two other guards that he can trust with the ball at any time, and that’s been successful for us so far.”
The Owls have put together 10 wins in a row including an 85-72 victory over Xavier. A game in which the Cherry and White shot 19-of-31 from the field in the first half. They drained 7-of-11 from behind the arc during that stretch.
“They’ve got three guards that can play with anyone in the country,” Xavier coach Chris Mack said. “They play really well together. At times, you feel like you’re playing in old man’s rec league because they know how to play off one another and get shots and have a great pace for the game.”
“It’s us out there doing what we think is best for us to win,” Wyatt explained.
“That’s one of the reasons why we have been winning so much lately,” Fernandez added. “We got to keep trying to get everybody involved and keep on that same track.”
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