Keys to Victory for Tulane vs. Temple
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Saturday at 2:45 p.m., CST, the Tulane football team is in Philadelphia to battle the Temple Owls. The Green Wave is ranked in both the AP Top-25 poll at #25 and the USA Today Coaches poll at #24. In addition, the Wave find themselves in the College Football Playoff top slots, edging in at #24 this week. Projections are that if Tulane wins out and claims the American Conference championship game, they'll be in the CFP final brackets. TU is 8-2 on the season, 5-1 in conference play. The other TU, Temple, is 5-5 on the year, 3-3 in league games. Here are our keys to victory for the Greenies.
Tune It All Out
Ranked? Ignore it. Last year's end of the season issues? Can't/Won't happen again. Tulane coach Jon Sumrall has convinced his players to take it one game at a time. 1-and-0 is how he and his players describe it.
Last year, the transfer portal was taking its toll on the Green Wave, as players were thinking about where they could be instead of where they currently were. We look at those who moved on from the 2024 edition of the Wave in this article. The NCAA sort of fixed that this year, moving the portal to January.
In addition to the portal demons of last season, rumors swirled in 2024 about Sumrall getting offers to coach elsewhere. That has not been fixed. Whether it's the Florida job, or Auburn, or Walla Walla, Washington, Sumrall seems to be at the top of everyone's list. Sumrall says all the right things: he already has a job at Tulane, there's movement every year with players and coaches, etc. Of course, Willie Fritz said the pretty much the same thing before moving on to Houston.
This will never end because of where Tulane stacks up in the football world. However, tuning all this out is how the Green Wave get to the ultimate goal: the College Football Playoffs.
Do Not Look Down Your Nose at Temple
Anyone who was around last year might remember the 46-point butt-whupping Tulane put on Temple. Sumrall says, quite accurately, that this is not the same Owl team. Sure, there was player turnover at Temple, as there is for every team in this world of the transfer portal, but this is a well-coached team, one that just doesn't turn the ball over. Look past these Owls and Tulane will be on the short end of the scoreboard, and all those dreams of the college playoffs will instead be nightmares.
Tulane Running Game Must be On It
Last week, the Green Wave running game got the spark it needed in redshirt freshman Jamauri McClure. The frosh ran 94-yards on 10-carries, leading the Tulane to its best team rushing output in five games. Though Temple is not Florida Atlantic, a team that just piles up the yardage, the Owls are no slouch and have vastly improved as the year has worn on. They have four receivers who have at least 26-catches each. Keep the ball out of the Owls' hands, and Tulane can claim victory. The shifty, lightening-quick McClure may be that running back the Green Wave have been searching for since the beginning of the season who can do just that.
No Turnovers
Winning the turnover battle against a team that doesn't turn the ball over is hard enough. If the Green Wave turn the ball over at all, it will be near about impossible against Temple. In the last two games, Tulane has turned over the ball a combined one time, while claiming five turnovers in those two victories. Three weeks ago, the Wave gave away the ball four times while not collecting one in return. That was the loss to Texas-San Antonio. Simple Math says it all: zero turnovers = victory.
Tulane and Temple meet in an American Conference contest today at 2:45 p.m. CST in Philadelphia.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.