Following Temple's 61-59 loss to the men's basketball team Dec. 9 at Rec Hall, Temple coach John Chaney warned that if the pushing and shoving in that game continued to the next, a fight would result.

That next game is 7:30 tonight at Temple's McGonigle Hall, and the Lions can pull to within percentage points of the top spot in the Atlantic 10.

Get ready for Penn State-Temple II.

In this corner wearing the blue and white jerseys, and sporting a 9-3 conference record (16-5 overall), are the the Lions -- No. 2 in the conference. The Lions are riding a six-game winning streak and have won nine of their last 10.

In the other corner, wearing cherry and white, are the conference-leading (11-2, 13-8 overall) Owls. The Owls are without 7-foot center Duane Causwell, who was declared academically ineligible earlier in the season.

But even without him the game will still be physical.

"I'm sure it will be," center Ed Fogell said. "It will make a little bit of a difference that he's not in there, but we're just going to look at it as another game. We can't let it affect us that much."

In the last game before 7,211 fans, the Lions led 36-33 at halftime thanks to 53.6 percent field goal shooting. The Lions led by seven twice in the second half, but with 1:14 left Mark Macon hit a 17-foot jumper to give the Owls a 59-57 lead. However, Monroe Brown dropped in two free throws with five seconds left to ice the win for the Lions.

The key to the game was holding All-American guard Macon to only 10 points on 4-of-16 shooting. Causwell connected on 7-of-10 shots and scored 14 points.

Before Sunday's game with UMass, which the Owls won 83-82 in triple overtime, Macon was averaging 19.3 points per game and 5.7 rebounds per game.

Seven-foot freshman center Donald Hodges was averaging 15.7 ppg and 7.9 rpg and sophomore forward Mik Kilgore was beginning to come into his own, averaging 11.9 ppg and 6.5 rpg. Guard Michael Harden (7.1, 2.4) and forward Mark Strickland (3.8, 4.5) round out the starting five.

The Lions are led by Fogell (14.8, 5.2), who is shooting 62.4 percent from the field, and forward James Barnes, who was named A-10 Co-Player of the Week after scoring 42 points and pulling down 27 rebounds in three games last week.

Point guard Freddie Barnes (10.7, 3.9) has increased his shooting percentage to 38.5 percent. Guard Monroe Brown (7.9, 4.1) has also increased his percentage to 36.1 and and forward DeRon Hayes (8.2, 4.8) is shooting 51.3 percent.

The Lions are heading into the heart of their A-10 schedule with Temple tonight, Rutgers on Thursday, George Washington on Saturday and West Virginia next Thursday. But right now Coach Bruce Parkhill likes where his team's record stands.

"I'm tickled with where we are," Parkhill said. "We knew last Saturday we were heading into an important string of games. Now we've set the stage to do some good things."