Saturday 10 November 2007

You can lead a horse to water, but you ...



Temple fans were there in force; just wait and see what happens when the school wins the MAC.
Great photos by Darryl Rule

Stark and indisputable visual evidence of a Temple fan-dominated side of the field
By Mike Gibson
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
I thought about that while watching a usually sure-handed Temple tight end drop a sure-handed touchdown pass.
I thought about that while watching another sure-handed Owl, Daryl Robinson, drop a pass over the middle with plenty of real estate in front of him.
I even thought about it while watching the most glue-fingered Owl, Bruce Francis, foul up what looked like a promising pass off a double-reverse.
Al Golden and George DeLeone led their horses right up to not water but champagne yesterday in a 31-0 loss to Penn State and they took one sniff, reared their hind legs and walked away in the opposite direction.
If they had just had a taste.
One touchdown, to Matt Balasavage, would have made it 14-7.
Who knows how far Daryl Robinson would have gotten in the open field?
Or what would have happened if Bruce Francis been able to get a grip?
The defense of Mark D'Onofrio had been playing with a swagger all day.
Had the offense helped out by putting points on the board, maybe they would not have been as tired as they were at the end when they gave up a couple of relatively meaningless touchdowns.
Maybe next week.
Maybe next year.
It's all part of the process, as Golden likes to say.
This time, the coaches did their jobs about as well as expected.
The lesson learned was to catch those balls, execute those plays, put points on the board.
Penn State did not stop Temple on those plays. Temple stopped Temple.
Just once, it would be nice for this thirsty program to sip the same kind of drink Appalachian State and Stanford tasted earlier this season.
That something will have to come another day.
There is only one thing more frustrating than to contemplate what might have been and that's musing about what should have been.

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