DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — Dionte Christmas and his Temple teammates hit a low point after dropping a 68-52 decision at home to MAC foe Miami on Dec. 3, but they recovered with a win at Penn State before ambushing Tennessee on Saturday.

"Miami of Ohio was a tough loss for us," Christmas said on the Atlantic 10 teleconference Monday. "We weren't as focused as we needed to be. The coaches did a good job of making us believe how good a team we were."

Although Christmas — the Atlantic 10's two-time defending scoring champ — hit seven 3-pointers during his 35-point outburst in an 88-72 win over the Vols, he was more impressed with the production of center Sergio Olmos.

The senior has gone from being an awkward 7-footer last year to looking like a clone of the Cavaliers' Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Displaying a deft outside touch, Olmos had a career-high 19 points to go with five blocks.

"I thought he was the player of the game," Christmas said. "He gives us energy. He talks more than ever talked. He's becoming a leader."

Kellogg delivers

The Derek Kellogg era at UMass didn't exactly get off to a rollicking start. The first-year coach lost six of his first seven games, including a pair of one-pointers and another in overtime.

"I'm the type of person that's not too high after a big win or too low after a tough stretch," he said. "I told the team when we were 1-6 and desperately needing to win that I thought we were the best 1-6 team in the country."

The Minutemen supported that claim by beating Holy Cross and then upsetting Kansas on Saturday. And Kellogg, a former UMass player, was pleased to be able to reward those fans who had given him such a warm homecoming.

"When I got in the locker room, I had 70 texts, 20 voicemails and 15 missed calls — all of them saying, 'That was great to watch.' They want to see, not us win every game, but to play with that blue-collar style."

Bonnies' bench deep

Second-year St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt is going nine or 10 deep into his bench after rotating six players last year, and his subs have out-scored the opposing back-ups in all eight games this year. But keeping everyone happy hasn't been easy.

"I'm not sure if they've bought into it," said Schmidt, whose team is 5-3 after going 8-22 a year ago. "Everyone wants to start. We've emphasized starting isn't important, that when your name is called, you've got to give us a spark. But, of course, everyone wants to hear their name called at the beginning of the game."

Charlotte rebounds

After losing two games by a point and two others in overtime during a six-game losing streak, Charlotte racked up two significant victories last week, winning at Southern Illinois, a perennial postseason participant, and at Mississippi State, the defending Southeastern Conference West champion.

"We obviously got off to a start we didn't expect," 49ers coach Bobby Lutz said. "We knew we scheduled very aggressively. We didn't envision losing all those games. I've never had a run like that where you lose all of them. ... I think we're obviously a better team now than we were."

They said it

• Rhode Island coach Jim Baron on Dionte Christmas: "There's nobody in the country who can stop that guy."

• UMass' Kellogg on upsetting Kansas before Temple visits the Jayhawks on Saturday: "Tell coach (Fran) Dunphy I apologize because they're probably woken up now."

• Xavier coach Sean Miller: "Our conference will have a lot of parity to it with four or five teams fighting for the title."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2125 or dharris@DaytonDailyNews.com.