It's practice, not a game, practice

When he played running back at Bishop McDevitt, there was no better RB in Southeastern Pennsylvania than Lamar McPherson, who is profiled today.
By Mike Gibson
I've never been a big practice guy and that goes back to my pre-teen days when I first started playing organized sports.

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The first practice I ever attended was for my grade school travel baseball team as a 10-year-old.
At our first practice, the coach told us to go to a position where we'd like to play.
I went out to shortstop on the field at Conwell and the Boulevard, made a couple of nice plays diving for balls up the middle and throwing guys out at first and the coach took me aside.
"You can't play there," he said.
"What I do wrong?"
"Nothing. You are a lefty. Lefties don't play short. What other position do you play?"
"Catcher," I said.
"Lefties don't play catcher, either."
So they made me a pitcher.
Never liked practice since.
So, too, it is with Temple football.
In all of my days following the Owls, my eyes have fooled me only in practice.
As Allen Iverson says, "Not a game. Practice."
Lamar McPherson alluded to it when he said in today's interview (video posted above) that, "Camp is camp."

What I want to see more than anything else at the Villanova game is a Temple team that plays sharp and makes no mental mistakes.

The last 30 or so years, I can count 10 guys who were practice all-timers but couldn't play a lick in the games.
One quarterback of the Bobby Wallace Era was the greatest practice quarterback I ever saw, but had this annoying habit of throwing the ball to other team's jerseys in the games. He even fooled an NFL team into giving him a contract because he had terrific (you guessed it) practices. Once he got into a couple of exhibition games, his career was short-lived.
Adam DiMichele was, by his own admission, a terrible practice quarterback but there was no better guy in games.
Give me ADM over anybody else. I trusted him in games. He earned my trust.
That said, I realize more than anybody else that four hard weeks of good practices are necessary to beating Villanova, so I hope the Owls have four terrific weeks of practice, get their timing down and have no false starts or offsides or holding penalties in the game. What I want to see more than anything else at the Villanova game is a Temple team that plays sharp and makes no mental mistakes. That, however, requires a great summer camp where all the players and coaches remain totally focused.
So we'll keep posting practice videos, with one eye askanse.
Other than that, wake me up when the games start.