Men's Basketball Renews Rivalry With Temple

PHILADELPHIA - The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team closes out the non-conference portion of its 2012-13 season Wednesday night, making the short trip to North Broad to renew acquaintances with Big 5 rival Temple. As usual, the major storyline features the coaches, as for the fourth time Penn head coach Jerome Allen matches up against his coach when he wore the red and blue in the 1990s, Fran Dunphy.

GAME 18 - PENN (3-14) at TEMPLE (12-5)
Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013 * 7 p.m.
Liacouras Center (Philadelphia)
TV: OwlSports.com (there is a charge for this service)
Radio: PennAthletics.com (Brian Seltzer, Vince Curran)

Click here for Live Stats!

Penn Game Notes (PDF) / Temple Game Notes (PDF)

The Penn-Temple Series
*The Quakers and the Owls are meeting for the 62nd time in men's basketball. Temple leads the series, 42-19.

*Temple has won the last five games in this series and eight of the last nine. Last year, at The Palestra, the Owls gained a 73-67 overtime victory.

I Know You!
Wednesday's game represents the fourth coaching matchup between Penn head coach Jerome Allen and the man who coached him as a player at Penn, Fran Dunphy. The Owls coaching staff also includes Shawn Trice, a teammate of Allen's at Penn.

DNH Earns Weekly Ivy Honor
Freshman Darien Nelson-Henry was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week on Monday, after posting his first collegiate double-double in Penn's win over NJIT last Thursday and following it up with 17 points and seven rebounds in Saturday's Big 5 loss to Saint Joseph's

Growing Up
Some of Penn's less experienced players have shown signs of finding their way and growing into the college game recently. Some examples...

*Junior Dau Jok entered this season with nine career points and seven rebounds; he entered last Saturday's La Salle game at 37 career points and 29 career boards; in the last five games, he has scored 32 points and snared 24 rebounds.

*In his last six games, freshman Tony Hicks has 64 points (10.7 ppg).

*In his last four games, freshman Darien Nelson-Henry has 57 points (14.3 ppg); after scoring a combined 16 points in his first six games, "DNH" has scored seven or more points in eight of his last 10 appearances.

*After averaging just 1.9 rebounds per game in his first nine appearances for Penn-remember, he missed all of last year due to injury-sophomore Greg Louis has had four or more boards in seven of the last eight games. (In the outlier game, he had three.)

*After averaging 2.8 points per game in Penn's first eight contests, Louis has averaged 6.4 ppg in the last nine.

Missing Doc
Penn has played the last seven games without junior captain Fran Dougherty, and he is not expected for tonight's game. So what are they missing?

*He leads the Ivy League in overall rebounding (8.8 rpg), and is third in both scoring (15.7 ppg) and field-goal percentage (52.5).

*He led Penn in rebounding in each of the first eight games this season; in his absence, four different players have led the team in boards.

Quaker Notemeal From Saint Joseph's
*Penn committed just 10 turnovers, a season low, and took 65 shots, a season high.

*Saint Joseph's tied opponent season highs with 11 three-point field goals and eight blocked shots.

*Freshman Darien Nelson-Henry scored 17 points, tying his season/career high, for his fourth straight double-figure scoring game (14.3 ppg).

*Nelson-Henry also had seven rebounds, giving him 18 in the last two games.

*Penn played for the seventh straight game without leading scorer and rebounder Fran Dougherty, who is out due to mononucleosis.