On and Off the Court, USD’s Temple Making the Transition

Games have always come easily to Lincoln High product Joe Temple. He could pick up a bat or a ball, lace up running shoes, jump on a bike or swing a club and he became the single best argument against organized instruction in sports.

“If I ever need another guy to go golfing with, I’d call Joe,” said Lincoln basketball Coach Ron Loneski. “He can play something once and he won’t embarrass you. He has that kind of physical talent.”

It was the rest of the equation that, after his high school glory days, didn’t fall so gracefully into place.

Temple, a junior redshirt, is four games into his third basketball season at the University of San Diego and two years removed from the doubt and frustration that plagued him his first two seasons.

The 6-foot-3 swingman is the Toreros’ third leading scorer (9.5 points per game) and third leading rebounder (3.3 average).

Temple already has equaled last year’s career best 13 points against Cal State Hayward. His best game was the Toreros’ season opener against San Diego State, where Temple scored 13 points, grabbed five rebounds, had three steals and made two assists and an impression on USD Coach Hank Egan.

“That was more intense than I’ve ever seen him,” Egan said. “That’s what he needs to do, assume that high intensity level.”

It took some time for Egan to assume that Temple could start. Temple played 52 minutes his freshman year, redshirted his sophomore year (1990-91), then started to come into his own last season, when he appeared in 22 games.

Temple’s redshirt year was a big reason he got where he is now, a starting position.

“It helped him an awful lot,” Egan said. “You can’t solve a problem until you face it.”

During a final-exam study break, Temple talked fondly about his redshirt season.

“It was kind of humbling, but it was a decision Coach Egan and I agreed upon,” he said. “I looked at the team and didn’t think I’d get to play much. It was a way to get a better understanding of the game.”

Temple and Gylan Dottin, the Toreros’ leading scorer and rebounder and co-captain, would sit in the stands and try to figure why offensive schemes that worked so well in practice weren’t successful in games. It was a different perspective on a game still relatively new to him, and Temple gained a new appreciation of it.

“That was big for me, it made me learn to concentrate more,” he said.

Had Temple dribbled a basketball before the ninth grade, he might have procured the skills fundamental to the game. But he didn’t start to play until his pal Aaron Wilhite encouraged him to try out for Lincoln’s team.

“We made the team and the rest, as they say, is history,” Temple said.

The years at Lincoln were punctated by the 1987-88 season, when the Hornets were 26-3 and lost in the Division III state final to San Francisco Skyline. Life was almost as good a year later. In 1988-89, Lincoln was 27-2 and was a victory short of its second consecutive state championship performance before the Hornets lost to Inglewood Morningside in the regional final.

Wilhite, the San Diego Section’s 1989 2-A Co-Player of the Year--a honor he shared with SDSU’s Tony Clark--was not only Temple’s buddy but his partner in success.

“They were best years we had (at Lincoln) and I attribute that to those two kids,” Loneski said.

But what some big-time recruiters saw in Wilhite--who plies his trade at North Carolina Charlotte--was lacking in Temple.

“He’s learned everything in high school and college,” Loneski said. “He didn’t have the fundamental skills to be a highly recruited player. He didn’t have an outside shot and no great defensive skills. Hank recruited him, probably because he saw potential.”

Said Egan: “He’s a terrific athlete who has some skills. His progress is only limited by the fact that he hasn’t been a basketball junkie. He played football, basketball and ran track in high school and he wasn’t in the tough L.A. summer programs like some of the kids. He hasn’t been there enough, but he has been there now.”

It’s no secret that Temple’s backdrop was Lincoln, where structure is sacrificed for savvy.

“Everything at Lincoln was a dunk. I didn’t have a lot of the skills I needed,” Temple said. “What we did was go up and down the court, no half-court sets, no screens. That puts you behind when you get to college.”

In college, Temple discovered, dunks are not free.

“No one does that,” Egan said. “People wouldn’t give you that kind of a game. In this league you have to have a lot more skills. Joe was hard to convince of that.”

Egan stressed that the ability of a player to reach his potential is dictated by the player, not by the program, and the same applies to Temple, who agreed.

“This system is good for the way I play,” he said. “At (Loyola Marymount) and UNLV, everyone’s really athletic. Here, we have a couple of guys like that, but we have more role players. (Egan’s) system allows for everyone to get involved. I can work out of that.”

And Egan gave Temple the chance. USD, USIU and SDSU, briefly, were the only programs the courted Temple, much to his surprise and disappointment.

“In high school, I never had to play against anyone that was that much better than me, and when I did, I could get by on my athletic ability alone,” Temple said. “In college, it’s not like that. Their skills make them better. You have to think of ways to outsmart that person.”

He is beginning to do that, but Temple’s transition game into college was as much off the court as well as on.

No one who has been through it underestimates the hassles and demands that the high school-to-college life change bring. But in Temple’s case, college meant more than discovering life outside of parental parameters.

“I was frustrated with the whole concept of college,” Temple said “Coming to USD, a predominantly white school, I had a hard time with that, the social pressure, and the acceptance. I had to find a way to fit in because I was a black man, because I was an athlete and because I was a student.

“I came to the conclusion that regardless of who they are, they have to accept me and I have to accept them. I realized I had to give them a chance, and they would have to accept me as Joe, not just as an athlete.”

Temple stopped for a moment to chuckle.

“I’ve taken a stand on certain issues,” he said. “People are like, ‘Oh boy, here comes Joe again.’ It’s like I’m USD’s Malcolm X or something.”

When Temple arrived at USD, he estimated there weren’t more than 55 African Americans on campus. That bothered him.

“When I first got here, only a few African Americans could get in or afford it,” he said. “I couldn’t understand why they weren’t out trying to recruit more African Americans, although the numbers are better now.”

And Temple didn’t simply talk the talk. He backed his words by becoming involved.

“Athletes are seen as people who hold a lot of power,” he said. “I knew I could either be quiet or say something. Me saying something helped out.”

Where there was once a dormant Black Student Union, Temple helped revived it. Recently, BSU received administrative support for Black History Month, and Temple said the university has received a grant that will fund multicultural course offerings for different ethnic groups.

Temple was also on a subcommittee of the university’s accreditation committee that studied how many and what kinds of ethnic groups there were on campus, and what kind of administrative support they received.

If Temple is somewhat of an activist now, Loneski remembers him only as the model player. Loneski has a board on his wall at school that lists his “All Gentleman Team,” which was compiled over the course of 10 years. Five players have made that team, Temple among them.

“They are winners in life that are going to make it, with or without basketball,” Loneski said. “They’ve never embarrassed anyone, their family members, their friends, their coaches, their school.”

So as not to embarrass the opponent, it was common for Temple to request to be taken out of games that the Hornets were winning by a landslide.

“He’s the kind of guy, when we were beating someone by 10 to 15 points, he’d say, ‘Take me out coach and give someone else a chance.’ He didn’t care about his scoring average. . . . He’s the kind of guy coaches dream to have, because of his attitude.”

The kind of guy you wouldn’t mind having in your golf foursome, either.