Marc Jackson helps explain where the Temple Owls are right now | Mike Jensen

Marc Jackson, just off the air Sunday evening after finishing off his analysis on Sixers Post Game Live, had just gotten in his car, but the hoops analysis continued over the phone as Jackson drove home.

“They’re starting to turn the corners,” Jackson said right away, but he wasn’t talking about the Sixers. He meant his own alma mater, the Temple Owls. He also knows there are multiple corners in college basketball, each intersection usually leading to another road that often seems to wind uphill.

Jackson doesn’t hide his allegiance to Temple, even as he did an Owls analysis stint Saturday for ESPN+. Jackson got to Temple as a player the year after Aaron McKie left for the NBA, but their own bond goes back further and deeper.

» READ MORE: Williams hurt as Temple loses at USF

“Ooh, man, since I was 13, 14 years old,” Jackson said. “We had the same coach, John Hardnett. Gustine Lake.”

That Hardnett hoops laboratory inside that rec center on Ridge Avenue was a home for so many local stars, including Jackson when he was at Roman Catholic High, and McKie at Simon Gratz.

“My thing, I go to some of Aaron’s practices,” Jackson said, bringing it back to the present. “Aaron’s wanted to recruit his kind of guys. He doesn’t care about the rankings. Do you fit what I’m trying to do? He’ll tell you, ‘I want some dogs who can take it but like to give it.’‘’

That’s what Jackson believes he’s seeing lately on North Broad Street.

“Get some young guys who are hungry, have some grit,” Jackson said.

Jackson’s larger picture is that while transfers are the current way to make your team better, McKie mostly chose the longer road, getting several key transfers but mainly building with high school recruits.

Jackson tells McKie, “I don’t know how you sleep at night. … You can have the third-youngest team, then come May or June, you have to recruit 12 new guys.”

“Dude, I don’t sleep,” Jackson said McKie responded. “You just can’t.”

The city and the sport are looking for liftoff, which is why Temple’s recent stretch of success seems significant.

“Listen to what you just said,” Jackson said over the phone, about everyone looking to see signs of that liftoff. “Here’s the thing. They’re freshmen. They’re young. We want to see something now. We want to see it ASAP. Aaron did it a different way. It takes time to learn how to play basketball. The transfer thing doesn’t start in college. It starts in elementary school. I have an AAU team. A lot of high school coaches are scared to coach guys, afraid they’ll leave. Aaron’s thing, you have to learn to play my system.”

Jackson isn’t knocking transfers. He was one himself, leaving VCU after one season to come home to play for John Chaney. He could tell you how that was the best decision of his life, but that’s a conversation for another day.

» READ MORE: Mia Davis becomes Temple's all-time leading scorer

This evening, he’s asked about Nick Jourdain, in his second season at power forward, but technically a freshman since last season didn’t count for eligibility purposes.

“Jourdain is very smooth,” Jackson said. “He’s a modern-day four. He can play defense, is very skilled, can go above the rim, can shoot.”

Jackson adds this with a chuckle …

“Back in my day, I would have killed him …”

Different game, requiring different skills.

“His ceiling is high,” Jackson said.

What Jackson likes most is what everyone is seeing, the younger players getting used to playing with one another, especially defensively.

“When they go small, their defense is just incredible,” Jackson said.

He talks of the length of Temple’s wings, of a defense led by Jeremiah Williams. When Williams hurt his shoulder Monday at South Florida, there’s little question that impacted Temple’s defense. I charted Temple’s first-half defense, before and after Williams left the game, and it remained strong. The help defense looked helpful right until the last two possessions of the half, when a USF alley-oop came too easily and a drive to the hoop came without resistance, allowing USF to scrape to a 22-20 lead. Six straight Temple missed free throws factored in, too.

My chart was simple, giving a plus or a minus to each defensive possession, adding a half-dozen neutral defensive stands. Before the two late giveaways, Temple had chalked up 18 “plus” defensive stands, to just six “minus” stands. It was all the more impressive when you note that Jahlil White and Zach Hicks are both first-year players, and Hysier Miller, who got extended time after Williams went out, is a freshman. None of the three look lost out there.

Some Temple fans have begun dreaming of what it would take to get an NCAA at-large bid. Winning six of seven, getting to the upper reaches of the AAC, will do that for you. But a 1-3 start counts too, as does the December loss to St. Joseph’s. Monday’s 52-49 loss to USF, even when you factor in the Williams injury and a late one suffered by current top scorer Damian Dunn, still adds up to 13-8 overall and 6-4 in the AAC, which is outside the top 100 of the KenPom.com rankings.

A tough loss to stomach, no doubt. A rescheduled game played with one day’s rest on the road. A brutal end-game scenario, when the Owls gave up their only three-pointer of the night off a great defensive stand that produced a loose ball that bounced to a USF player who squared up and threw it in. That’s the way the ball bounces sometimes, and Temple did not help itself with 18 turnovers.

» READ MORE: Sam Sessoms playing this Penn State season with a heavy heart

It all adds up to some legit hope, even if there are more corners leading to more uphill roads. Right now, Temple is 16th in Division I in adjusted field-goal percentage defense, but stands 357th among 358 teams in game experience. That’s the combination of stats Jackson wants you to remember.

“They’re starting to take on his personality,” Jackson said of his friend the Owls coach. “They’re taking defense personally.”