Monday, February 21 Temple's zone spells doom By Bill Doherty Special to ESPN.com

Other than "Can Toni Kukoc co-exist with Allen Iverson?" the most-asked hoops questions in the City of Brotherly Love these days are: Can Temple beat No.1 Cincinnati this weekend and are the Owls a legitimate Final Four threat?

TOP GAMES

ACC Virginia at North Carolina (Saturday) The Cavaliers (17-8, 7-4 ACC) will be trying to overcome history as well as North Carolina's history-in-the-making point guard here. First, the history of this matchup is unbelievably one-sided: North Carolina (16-9, 7-4) is 56-3 vs. UVa in Chapel Hill. To have a chance in this important ACC battle, the Cavs must slow down North Carolina's Ed Cota, who is in sixth place among NCAA career assist leaders with 954 assists. Cota should move into fourth place during the course of this game, passing Marquette's Tony Miller (fifth with 956 career assists) and Syracuse's Sherman Douglas (fourth with 960). Atlantic 10 Temple at Cincinnati (Sunday) John Chaney goes after his 400th win at Temple (19-4) against an all-too-familiar dance partner in Bob Huggins (three NCAA tourney meetings between the two teams within the past five years). This weekend, they meet again. The host Bearcats (24-1) are the nation's best team with the nation's most-talked about player in Kenyon Martin. They'll have revenge on their minds after the Owls ended their 1998-99 season with a 64-54 upset in the second round of the NCAA East Regional. Big East Syracuse at St. John's (Saturday) This Big East meeting with the Orangemen (21-2, 10-1 Big East) begins a killer five-game stretch to end the season for St. John's (17-6, 9-3), which faces No.8 Syracuse, No. 18 UConn, No. 3 Duke, No. 25 Seton Hall and Miami (Fla.) in its next five games. The mano-a-mano battle between Syracuse's defensive stopper Jason Hart and St. John's point man Erick Barkley bears watching here.

The answers, according to this writer's Magic 8 ball, are "possibly" and "yes, no matter what happens Sunday against the top-ranked Bearcats." Beating a Cincinnati team hell-bent on revenge after last year's season-ending upset loss won't be easy this weekend. The Bearcats (24-1), winners of 16 consecutive games, have waited almost an entire calendar year to avenge last March's 64-54 loss to the Owls in the NCAA East Regional. And this year's Cincinnati team is much more talented than last year's model, thanks to the additions of super frosh DerMarr Johnson and Kenny Satterfield and the continued maturation of Kenyon Martin, who is clearly now the best college player in the country.

"Cincinnati, in my opinion, is the best team in the land," UConn coach Jim Calhoun said Thursday. "But much like Duke last year, they are just blowing other teams out. It will be interesting to see what happens when they get into a close game, like Duke finally did last year in the NCAA Final against us. Prior to playing Duke, we had trailed at halftime nine different times and had come back to win all nine times. So, when we fell behind Duke at the half, we weren't afraid because we had been in that situation before. It will be real interesting to see what happens when Cincinnati finds itself in a close game."

The Bearcats should find themselves in a hard-fought March Madness-type game this weekend against the white-hot Owls. Since the return of unflappable senior man Pepe Sanchez, Temple (19-4) has won 10 consecutive games and 13 of its last 14, including back-to-back quality wins over Maryland and Dayton. Against Maryland, Sanchez took only four shots, but he was the most dominant figure on the court -- handling Maryland's full-court pressure defense (three turnovers), running the Owls' deliberate offense (game-high 11 assists) and keying the Temple defense (nine steals).

"He's the best point guard in the college game, bar none," Temple coach John Chaney said. "A lot of people think that the kid at North Carolina (Ed Cota) is the best. But he'd be sitting on the bench for me, behind Pepe. Same with that kid at Michigan State (Mateen Cleaves). We played against them last year, and he turned the ball over 10 times. Ten. It takes Pepe four or five games to commit 10 turnovers, and Cleaves did it in one night against us."

Sanchez has a 4.6-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio and is averaging almost four steals per game in the Owls' tough-to-crack matchup zone defense (a defense which can look like a 1-3-1 when the ball is out on top and a 2-3 once the ball is passed to the wing). That defense, which has held opponents to an average of only 54 points per game this season, and Temple's deliberate, peel-the-shot-clock-down-to-near-zero-one-every-possession offensive style usually keeps Temple in each and every game it plays. And Temple's constants -- defense, few turnovers and solid board work -- should keep the Owls in Sunday's showdown with Cincinnati.

"Playing against Temple is like going to the dentist," Huggins said. "It's going to be slow, painful and ugly, but you hope it helps you in the long run."

The question is: Why does the matchup zone work? Cincinnati has played Temple often in the 1990s, yet in last year's NCAA Tournament, the Bearcats' starting backcourt of Steve Logan and Melvin Levett shot a combined 8-for-27. As a team, Cincinnati entered the game shooting 46.9 percent from the field, but connected on only 34.7 percent of its shots against Temple.

"The mystique of the Temple zone is bigger than the defense itself," Fordham coach Bob Hill said. "There are holes in it. You can get shots, but you have to study it. The biggest advantage that thing has is their big guys never come away from the basket."

Massachusetts coach Bruiser Flint said he thinks Hill is "absolutely right" in his belief that Temple's reputation for defense has a psychological effect on opponents.

	The Owls have won 13 of their last 14 games since the return of leader Pepe Sanchez.

"One thing that makes their zone so good is there is size in it," Flint said, referring to Temple's 6-foot-10, 230-pound Lamont Barnes and 6-9, 240-pound Kevin Lyde as well as the wingspan of their perimeter players -- 6-5, 220-pound Mark Karcher, 6-4, 195-pound Quincy Wadley and the 6-4, 198-pound Sanchez. There's even more size on the bench in roles players like senior Keaton Sanders (6-6, 225) and sophomore Ronald Rollerson (6-10, 290), the latter who looks like Notorious B.I.G. in hightops.

"You have to have a certain philosophy, and you have to follow it," Flint added. "You can't try to beat it on the perimeter. That's one of the mistakes a lot of teams make."

In many previous years, Temple has played good defense but had difficulty scoring. That's not true this season. The Owls have Sanchez, a great passer, to start the offense. Karcher, Wadley and Lynn Greer can all knock down the outside shots. That perimeter trio combined for 36 points in Temple's 64-58 victory over Dayton on Thursday night.

Karcher lost 30 pounds in the offseason and is playing with added sense of purpose this season. He is this team's "Lord of the Wings," the guy who takes the tough shots. But for how much longer is the question. The swingman who leads the Owls in scoring, and who has proven to be very difficult to handle in the A-10, is seriously thinking about turning professional after he completes his junior season. He tries to put it out of his mind, but it's always in there somewhere.

"It's frustrating," Karcher said after practice one morning, "just the whole thing about next year and what is expected of me every game now. I've got to come in, play like I'm playing up to higher expectations. It's something that's a challenge."

Karcher isn't dying to get away from college ball. But he has a 2-year-old son Equan in Baltimore and a 1-year-old daughter Aria in Philadelphia who has sickle-cell anemia. He wants to be able to support them. That is a real-world, bottom-line consideration.

"I love it here," Karcher said. "Coach brought me in. I look at it like he brought me in off the streets. I hate when I let Coach down in any situation. I love my team. ... But I've got kids. I have financial problems.

"I'm 21 years old now. It just hurts me to call my grandmother and ask her for help. She's been doing for me all my life. My parents have never been around."

Earlier in the season, Karcher was trying to do too much (read: hoisting too many 3-pointers) in hopes of playing himself into the first round of the NBA draft and the financial security it would bring him and his children. Now, on the advice of Milwaukee Bucks guard Sam Cassell, who grew up a few doors away from Karcher in Baltimore and is a close friend and mentor to the Temple star, Karcher is now looking for his mid-range jumper more and is playing the best ball of his career.

But Karcher isn't the only one with a lot to play for Sunday. The entire Temple team has a lot to play for, too -- a win here would help the Owls' already strong RPI, their seeding come March and their chances of landing of 6-7 Cincinnati prep star Erik Daniels, who will be sitting behind their bench Sunday. Daniels, a slender 20 ppg. scorer who is also being courted by Tennessee, DePaul, Ohio State, Providence and Boston College, is slated to make an official visit to Temple on Feb. 24.

But that's the future. Chaney's team is worried about the present, and that's the date with No.1 Cincinnati.

"We know Cincinnati's wanted to play us because of what happened last year," Karcher said. "As competitors, we've been looking for to it, too. We're starting to do what we have to do, to be one of the top teams. It feels good, but we can't live off this. We have to prepare for what's next."

And that's a hungry Cincinnati team.

"We're not happy with ourselves yet," Cincinnati senior Pete Mickeal said. "We're going out and staying hungry, whether we're playing Temple or anybody else. We're not out for revenge. This is just another game that can get us closer to where we want to be (the national championship game)."

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