EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- For all that inflation has affected, one price has remained unchanged: the cost of dreaming.
"You can still do that for free," John Chaney was reminded.
"Hush!" he commanded, pretending to be angry.
His face wanted to scowl, but the smile wouldn't relinquish its place. The Temple coach has been doing this long enough to know that sooner or later grim reality catches up to you in the NCAA tournament. But he's also been to the Sweet 16 often enough, as he is again now, to know that once you happen to catch hold of something then you ride it until it carries you over the horizon, or turns around and bites you.
The Owls already are playing with house money. They were supposed to have been dismissed from the tournament last week, either a desultory first-round loss to Kent State or surely a spanking by Cincinnati. Instead, they won.
Now, less than a week later, the Owls have leapfrogged from a team expected to exit early to one expected to keep on playing, and winning.
Well, at least once more.
The conventional wisdom is that, in a match-up of plodding, lunch-bucket teams, Temple mystifies Purdue tonight in the regional semifinals, and then on Sunday succumbs to the Duke monolith, which would hardly be a disgrace, and wouldn't that have been one wonderful run?
"Your mouth to God's ear," Chaney muttered. But the smile still wouldn't let go.
"Well, if we're gonna dream," said assistant coach Dean Demopolous, lowering his voice so neither the old man nor the players could hear, "why not dream about you know "
Beating Duke?
He shrugged, as though to ask, Why not? And then he shook his head, to shoo away such silly, distracting thoughts.
We were in the airport, last Sunday night having turned to Monday morning. Temple's plane was the last allowed to leave Boston, just ahead of heavy snow, and the last allowed to land in Philadelphia, where it was still snowing. The Owls had boarded and then sat at the gate in Boston for more than two hours, were told to get off, then get back on. Then, once in Philadelphia, we waited 45 minutes after arriving at the gate while six different people struggled to maneuver the portable ramp through the ice and slush up to the plane's exit.
Through all of this, through all the vexing delays and changes, John Chaney never moved from his seat in the plane. He was, literally, riding it all out. For all of his impatience, there are times when he can be as hardy as a cactus. Usually, he can transfer some of that to his players, and when you see it come into play is in the postseason. His best teams don't rattle.
It would be easy for them to get ahead of themselves now. Certainly their fans have. They already have Purdue beaten and are devising assorted ambushes for the Dookies.
Not much was expected of Purdue this season. The Boilermakers were only 7-9 in the Big Ten. But they are pluggers who don't mind winning, ahem, ugly, and for those tempted to overlook them, under coach Gene Keady the Boilers have won more regular-season Big Ten championships than anyone else.
Uh-huh. More than Indiana and a certain tyrant. More than Michigan.
To beat Temple, a team has to shoot from distance. That's why Cincinnati lost. The Bearcats don't shoot the ball as much as they throw it at the glass and then try to pound you into submission.
Purdue has not been a good perimeter-shooting team this season. Doesn't mean the Boilermakers can't heat up for one game, but it is unlikely. Of course, the unlikely is what we love about this tournament.
Plus, Temple has the decided advantage of being a stranger to Purdue. If you've never seen the Owls and their confounding zone defense, it can be a discombobulating experience.
So what with dreams being so inexpensive, let's project ahead to Sunday's regional finals.
Duke can be beaten because Duke has been beaten. Once. Long ago and far away. About the time most of us were disposing of the Thanksgiving carcass, up in the Great Alaska Shootout, Cincinnati -- the very Cincinnati that Temple just beat -- was edging Duke on a last-second shot.
Since then, the Dookies have been beating people by about 70 a game. They have extraordinary depth and balance, power inside and accuracy outside. Not only do they score in bunches, they play defense.
How to beat them, then? The consensus scouting report is to rough them up inside and pressure them out front, hope they rush their shots, hope you make well over half of your shots.
It would take your A-game and their C-game, and even then it might come down to one shot.
For a man who's always going "s-s-s-h-h-h" when you dare to bring up the unmentionable, John Chaney himself repeatedly brings up one specific example of how the unexpected can sometimes occur in basketball. He always talks about Villanova's perfect game against Georgetown to win the NCAA championship. In fact, he brought it up again last week in Boston.
So, you see, he dreams. He just won't do it out loud.
Pub Date: 3/29/99