Tag Archives: college-basketball

02.19.26
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Biggest difference between K.C. and Adam Fisher: Clayton Barnes

Imagine a football team of all punters.

Or all running backs.

Or at least a preponderance of one “type” of player.

That’s Temple basketball right now. I see a lot of guard types and very little in the area of post players and power forwards.

Not surprisingly, that program is floundering after three straight losses in a weak basketball league.

When Al Golden applied CPR to resuscitate Temple football from the dead in 2005, he brought with him a binder. The first chapter was his philosophy of building a team back in the days when college football was pure:

“I want to sign one player at each position ever year, including a punter and a kicker,” Al said. “If you do that every year, you get to develop the depth that you need.”

Looking at Temple basketball this year, I see a lot of one “type” of player and very little roster balance.

Obviously, the philosophy of past Temple football head coach Golden and current head coach K.C. Keeler is pretty much the same in the sense that each position needs depth and position integrity should be respected.

To me, the greatest basketball team ever was the 1967-68 Sixers. The primary reason why is because it had the best player at the most important position (center, Wilt Chamberlain) and prototype players at every other position (Luke Jackson, power forward; Chet Walker, finesse forward; Hal Greer, shooting guard and Wali Jones point guard).

The perfect team with perfect balance.

Where is the Wilt “type” on this Temple basketball team? Nowhere. Nor the Jackson type. Nor the Chet Walker type or the Greer type or Jones type.

Not asking for anyone near their ability but I am asking for someone at least capable of filling those types of roles.

It appears to be a collection of misfits and the fault of that belongs to the CEO.

That’s the difference between Temple football and Temple basketball.

A common theme on twitter or other social media platforms is Temple should direct football money into basketball. To me, that’s throwing good money after bad. I don’t have much hope for the future of Temple basketball unless it takes a Temple football leadership turn, but I have plenty of hope for Temple football and that’s where the good money should go.

Temple football apparently understands that each position requires a player with a different skill set than the position next to it or the position on the other side of the ball.

To me, Fisher is a good enough coach to win four straight games in an AAC tournament but not a good enough CEO to put a capable roster together.

Keeler is both a good enough coach to win and a great CEO because he understands he can’t do it alone. To me, that the biggest difference between the two not only is experience in the winning department, but a basic knowledge in this transfer portal era that help is needed in the area of building a balanced roster to win in the modern day AAC.

That’s where Temple football GM Clayton Barnes comes into the picture.

When Keeler was hired, his first quote was that “I wouldn’t have taken this job if Clayton Barnes didn’t agree to come with me” and that quote was telling. Keeler is an old school guy willing to adjust to new school approaches and Barnes, for the most part, has those answers on the football side. Surely, there is a basketball guy out there who knows how to put a college roster together.

On the basketball side, the sooner Fisher finds a “Barnes type” will determine his future at the school.

03.16.25
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Only one way to convince the doubters

Watching the NCAA basketball selection Sunday reaffirmed my doubts about the future of college sports.

You pay to win.

After years of complaining about Cinderellas getting access to the 68-team tournament, the Power 4 finally devised a way to keep out what they see as deplorables.

NIL and transfer portal.

Each year there are less and less Cinderella types and more and more of the bluebloods. The SEC got a record 14 teams in the tournament. The ACC got a team with a Quad 1 record of 1-11.

One and eleven against the best dozen teams on the schedule.

When it comes to Temple football, the outlook is slightly different because college football’s rough equivalent of March Madness is a 12-team tournament and the way things have been structured for awhile, the Temples of the world are not getting into something like that.

All new Temple head coach K.C. Keeler has to do, though, is to make the top 80 teams in the country to create some excitement around here. There are 130 FBS teams and 80 of them make bowl games and that’s a reasonable expectation for Temple football.

After four-straight 3-9 seasons and a 1-6 season before that, getting to a bowl game is going to feel like winning the national championship around here. The top 40 of those bowl teams pay to play but the bottom 40 get there through grit, guile and organization.

So far, Keeler has shown signs of improvement in that latter area yet there are doubters among Temple fans. Some say he’s “too old” and doesn’t fit the profile of a young hungry coach fans were used to under Matt Rhule and Al Golden.

Those were different times, though, where the “young and hungry” coach could recruit high school players, put them in the weight room for a year and redshirt them for another year before they would be ready to shine. Now try that and the player is gone after the “shine” year and Temple gets out of the deal is developing a kid for another program.

One day, maybe far into the future, a more equitable system might be in place but we have our doubts about that.

What we have no doubt about is that Keeler is the right guy for Temple at this time but we won’t know for sure until December.

If he’s able to pull it off, it will be worth the wait.

Next step: Humor

03.14.25
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Temple: One season over, one begins

Like many Temple fans, watched the finale of the Adam Fisher Story on Thursday night as the men’s basketball team lost to Tulsa.

Unacceptable.

Temple is a great school in the only World Heritage City in the United States with nearly 40,000 full-time students and many more famous alumni than Tulsa and Tulsa is in the middle of bum-bleep Oklahoma with only 3,200 full-time students.

If there is a legitimate leadership council at Temple, heads should roll.

That’s a discussion for another time and probably the next Board of Trustees meeting at Sullivan Hall.

One season is over and one is beginning.

Temple is led on the football side by a CEO who proved he knows what he is doing at three separate schools.

There is no reason to believe that won’t happen at a fourth.

On the other hand, Fisher’s major claim to fame was editing videos for Jim Larranaga at Miami.

Pretty wide gap between the two hires.

K.C. Keeler’s first week as a Temple head coach at an “official” spring practice will end tomorrow and there is a lot of good to say about his production.

Temple’s “Employee of the Week” showed an impressive grasp of the personnel under his disposal.

As a hard-core Temple fan for the last four years, I’ve studied the roster pretty well and think I have a firm handle on the ability of the holdovers.

In his first press conference as Temple’s head coach, Keeler demonstrated an “off-the-charts” kind of knowledge of the individual skills of every player who every reporter asked him about. That proves to me he both already studied the film and had an honest sit-down with all 105 scholarship players in the program.

Now all that needs left to be done is a clean evaluation of a month of practice and a further determination of what must be done in the transfer portal to plug a hole here and there.

That’s the kind of knowledge that Stan Drayton never showed in his three years here.

Will it translate into more wins?

That will all be determined by how Keeler’s staff fills the 10 or so holes that will inevitably need to be filled after spring practice is concluded.

Put it this way: I have a lot more confidence in a football guy leading my football program than a video guy leading my basketball program.

Monday: Doubting Thomases