Senior Day for the University of Memphis football team was marked by an uncomfortable loss to Temple University on Saturday.
Memphis fell to Temple 41-21 and appeared a relic of the same Tiger squad that gave the No. 21 ranked Cardinals of the University of Louisville a scare the previous weekend.
The Owls (2-10) walked into the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium with a singular win on the season against the United States Military Academy, but the Tigers (3-8) looked stagnant from the start, and Temple capitalized on the opportunity.
At the weekly press conference on Monday, head Memphis football coach Justin Fuente told the media Temple played pretty well and had more physicality on every position than the Tigers.
"When you're young and inexperienced and somewhat immature, sometimes things like that happen," he said. "We have to do a great job learning from it and understanding our expectations. The silver lining is we're going to go teach from it and make sure it doesn't happen again."
Temple rushed for 239 yards on the afternoon compared to Memphis' 86 yards. The Owl's sophomore running back Jamie Gilmore was a common named echoed over the loudspeakers Saturday. Gilmore contributed 103 of Temple's 239 rushing yards.
While the Tigers had many blunders on Saturday, two quick touchdowns in the third quarter stood out as the most painful.
The pass from Temple freshman quarterback PJ Walker to senior halfback Chris Coyer was good for a gain of 75-yards and the Temple touchdown. The second fatal infliction occurred barely a minute later when Memphis senior punter Tom Hornsey's return was blocked and recovered by Temple's sophomore linebacker Michael Felton for the touchdown with 9:38 left on the clock.
The calamity of events was made even more embarrassing for the Tigers when fireworks, which are supposed to be released following Memphis touchdowns, went off after Felton's recovery.
With minimal crowd support and stands that thinned out a little more after every play, the overall feel of the majority of the game was one of defeat.
The lone bright spot for Memphis was freshman receiver Sam Craft, who caught seven passes and recorded 131 all-purpose yards against Temple. The American Athletic Conference took note of Craft's performance and named the young Tiger to the conference's weekly honor roll.
The Tigers will reboot for their final game of the season Saturday when they head to East Harford, Conn., to face the Huskies of the University of Connecticut (2-9). Memphis, Temple and UConn comprise the bottom three teams in The American.
"I'm looking for our kids to have a great week of practice and bounce back from what was an unsatisfactory performance last week," Fuente said. "We'll have a pretty spirited and rough-and-tumble week of practice in order to get ready to go play UConn, who has won their last two football games."
Kickoff against the Huskies is slated for noon and can be viewed on ESPN3.com or listened to on 600 WREC.
Fuente said he was going to challenge all of his players this week and said he would not focus on one specific group of players.
"I'm going to focus on the whole unit," he said. "We had Senior Day, and that's over. Now it's time for us to go play at Connecticut. It's going to take a group of kids, whether you're a senior or a freshman, that want to go play."
