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Get ready for more bad puns regarding the Atlantic-10 and Temple this week. All because Temple takes care of Duquesne in the Atlantic-10 Tournament Championship game. It gives Temple a second straight A-10 Tournament title and their outstanding guard, Dionte Christmas the MVP for the tournament for the second straight year.

While Temple was not even discussed in the NCAA bubble scenarios at the beginning of the week, the Owls have a decent argument that they belong, simply beyond the fact that they won the A-10 Tourney. They have an RPI of 35 and went 2-3 against RPI top-50 teams including wins over Tennessee and Xavier. They also knocked off Big Ten bubble team, Penn State in Happy Valley. Not that the bubble teams care. They just wince at the fact that the Temple "stole" one more at-large bid

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Teams sitting on that bubble have a new concern. Xavier just went down in the Atlantic-10 semifinal to Temple. Teams like Arizona, Penn State, Creighton and San Diego State have just become the biggest Dayton fans. The Flyers face Duquesne tonight. The winner to face Temple in the A-10 final and the automatic bid.

The Musketeers are still a lock for the NCAA Tournament and Dayton is likely in. Just as the bubble had gotten a little loose with Rhode Island losing early in the A-10 Tourney, and now the A-10 may take it right back.

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Temple may be right there for the worst athletic department with a (sort of) division 1-A football team. Their latest APR report card (PDF) has the football team headed for scholarship reductions by next season. The baseball, basketball and even the golf teams got passes this season with the "squad-sized" adjustments.

Still, that's just a couple programs that are having academic issues. It's not like the entire athletic department is in trouble with the NCAA.

The NCAA announced yesterday that it has put the entire Temple athletic program on probation for two years and handed down other penalties for two violations that occurred in the Owls' sports program in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years.

Oh.

The big screw-up involved an apparently desperate tennis coach. He purposefully used an ineligible player for 9 matches in 2005.

The athlete, a midyear transfer, was allowed to compete under the name of an eligible player who had left the team. The NCAA reported that Hoehne, who had coached at Temple for seven seasons, even went so far as to mumble the player's name during pre-match introductions so as to not obviously identify him and requested that opponents skip the introductions.

Hoehne, to no one's surprise was fired after this came to light and the NCAA has effectively declared him unhireable by colleges for the the next seven years with a "show of cause" penalty. The Tennis team's sparkling 3-9 record for the season has been changed by the NCAA to 0-12.

The athletic department also didn't do much in the way of oversight in its financial aid distribution in 2004-05 and 2005-06. It turns out that 36 student-athletes were found to have used the money for book purchases to purchase books not needed for their classes. The purchases were generally for a girlfriend, other interests, or just to resell for cash.

Temple's president has issued a press release accepting the penalties and saying that it will never happen again. After his first season at Temple, basketball Coach Fran Dunphy (pictured right) has to wonder why he left Penn.