City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2016-17 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 11. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)

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Before Alani Moore even stepped on Temple’s campus for his freshman year, his role for the Owls changed drastically.

When the 5-foot-10 guard out of Friendship Collegiate (Md.) was recruited by Fran Dunphy and staff, it was with the expectation that he would spend that first year in a reserve role, learning from senior guard Josh Brown.

Then, in May, it was announced that Brown had suffered an Achilles injury, and he went under the knife shortly thereafter. Though there’s a chance the 6-foot-3 senior will return at some point this season -- he’s already back participating in sections of practice -- it won’t be by next Friday, when Temple hosts La Salle in the season opener.

So instead, Moore will become the first freshman to start a season opener since current senior Mark Williams did so against Penn in 2013.

“I was still coming in ready to play as a freshman, but now I’ve got to learn everything a little bit faster and just be ready a little bit earlier,” Moore told CoBL before practice last week. “I’m going to be thrown out there real early so I’ve got to be ready.”

Brown was considered the most crucial part of this Owls’ squad before his injury, as the St. Anthony (N.J.) product was ready to move into his second year as a full-time starter.

After spending his first two seasons at Temple as a key reserve, Brown had a terrific junior season for the Owls, finishing 10th in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.52:1) while averaging 8.3 ppp, 4.8 rpg and 4.9 apg. He also seemed to find his scoring touch as the season went on, putting together arguably his best performance of the season (16 points, nine rebounds, five assists) in the team’s NCAA Tournament loss to Iowa.

His absence from the lineup leaves some very big shoes to fill.

“I haven’t had as many conversations with a freshman guard as I have had with Alani Moore because I think we’re needing him to really step up here,” Dunphy said. “He’s been thrown into a situation that wasn’t my first choice, but that’s what it is and we have to figure it out.”

Brown’s injury also impacts sophomore Levan Alston, Jr., though in a somewhat different way.

A 6-4 guard who averaged 2.0 ppg in 31 games (three starts) a year ago, Alston was likely to move into the starting lineup this year whether Brown was available or not, especially with classmate Trey Lowe taking a redshirt this season as he recovers from a February car accident. Now, he’ll have to take a much larger share of the ball-handling responsibilities, in addition to shouldering some of the scoring load.

After spending most of his freshman year looking over his shoulder, The Haverford School product is coming into the 2016-17 season with a lot more confidence.

“Last year, I was thinking I didn’t want to mess up because the (less) you mess up, the more you stay on the court,” he said. “This year I feel like I can be more aggressive -- mistakes will happen, but I feel like I can play through them this year.”

Dunphy echoed that confidence at the American Athletic Conference’s media day last week.

“I think he’s got to play each and every bounce for us,” the 11th-year head coach said. “He’s got to play both positions -- shooting guard and scoring guard and point guard.

“It’s up to him to really do the best work he can,” Dunphy added. “I think he’s rewarded us with really some confident play right now and I think he’s gotten bigger and stronger and I think that helps you in every phase of the game.”

While nobody is going to argue that Brown’s absence is a positive for Temple, it does mean that the backcourt is going to work rather differently.

With Brown in the lineup, Alston would have played almost exclusively off the ball, though he can serve as a more-than-capable secondary ball-handler in Temple’s motion offense. Now in practice, he’s playing a lot more point guard -- something he did a lot of at Haverford -- and will run the Owls’ offense in live game action more than every so often.

Instead of more defined point and off-guard roles, look for Moore and Alston to split the duties more down the middle. It’s something they’ve actually done before they became college teammates: the two were on the same team at a Hoop Group camp four years ago, sharing a backcourt for a week’s worth of games.

And the chemistry that started when they were just beginning their high school careers is blossoming in college.

“We both look for each other when we’re on the same team at practice,” Moore said. “We both can shoot, we both can create for others. We have real good court chemistry, we find each other a lot for open shots and we both can run the team. So it’s two voices that everybody can hear, so I’d say it’s a very big plus for us.”

Without Brown or Lowe, the only perimeter bench options for Temple will be freshmen Quinton Rose and Ayan Nunez de Carvalho, plus junior college transfer Isaiah Lewis, meaning there’s a total of zero minutes of Division I experience in the reserves.

So it’s safe to say that getting Brown back at some point would provide some stability at the very least.

“Look at our backcourt, I’ll probably be the most experienced guy, and I don’t have that much experience myself,” Alston said. “Just another guy with some experience will definitely help.”