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James Madison-Temple Preview

Mar 20, 2010 - 10:04 PM By MATT BECKER STATS Senior Writer

James Madison (26-6) at Temple (24-8), 2:30 p.m. EDT

Led by a stingy defense, Temple is in the NCAA tournament for a seventh straight season. This unit will be put to the test when it faces James Madison's Dawn Evans, one of the nation's most dynamic scorers.

Seeking their first tournament win in three years, the eighth-seeded Owls look to contain Evans and the ninth-seeded Dukes on Sunday in Norfolk, Virginia.

Temple (24-8) earned its fourth straight at-large bid after going 11-3 in the Atlantic 10 and losing to No. 5 Xavier 57-55 in overtime in the conference tournament title game. The Owls limited the high-powered Musketeers, who finished undefeated in league play, to 15 points less than their season scoring average.

"If we can hang with the No. 5 team in the nation," Temple sophomore Kristen McCarthy said, "we can hang with anybody."

McCarthy and the Owls could get a chance to prove this theory with a possible second-round meeting with mighty Connecticut, but first they have to get past James Madison.

The Dukes (26-6) won the Colonial Athletic Association tournament title with a 67-53 victory over Old Dominion on March 14. It marked James Madison's first automatic NCAA tournament berth since 1989, and ended a streak of seven losing trips to the conference tournament title game since then.

Evans was named the league tournament's Most Outstanding Player after scoring 25 points against the Lady Monarchs, and has the Dukes in the NCAAs for the first time since 2007. Another strong performance in this game could give James Madison its first NCAA tournament win since advancing to the 1991 East Regional semifinals.

Evans is fifth in the nation in scoring, averaging 24.8 points, and has led the Dukes offensively in all but four games this season. Some of her best performances have come against some of the nation's top teams. The two-time all-CAA first-team selection had a season-high 38 points in a 75-73 win over then-No. 14 Virginia on Dec. 6 and finished with 31 points in a 79-65 loss at No. 7 Duke on Dec. 18.

She will now face a Temple team that is allowing an average of 55.0 points, 16th-best in the nation. The Owls are 19-1 when allowing 56 points or fewer and are up against a James Madison team that has reached that mark in all 32 games.

Temple's offense is led by McCarthy, who averages a team-best 15.2 points.

Like Evans, McCarthy is also an explosive scorer. The all-Atlantic 10 first-team selection scored a school-record 42 points in a 79-68 win over Charlotte on Feb. 13.

McCarthy had 12 points for then-ninth-seeded Temple in a 70-57 loss to No. 22 in Florida in the first round of last season's tournament.

The Owls haven't won in the tournament since defeating Nebraska 64-61 in the first round in 2007.

Temple is 2-4 all-time against the Dukes, and the schools haven't met since James Madison's 59-57 victory in the first round of the 2001 WNIT.