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Temple wins convincingly over UConn

01/28/2018, 11:45pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Quinton Rose (13) and Ernest Aflakpui (24) celebrate Temple's 85-57 win over UConn on Sunday night. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Victories in general have been more difficult to come by for this year’s Temple squad than had been expected. Easy wins? Those have been non-existent.

The Owls have had to scrape and claw for their first 10 wins of the season, especially of late. Temple’s last six wins, dating back to one over Wisconsin on Dec. 6, had come by an average of only 3.7 points -- a number inflated by a nine-point win over Penn last Saturday where Temple trailed by three with five minutes to play.

And though they had three double-digit wins in their first four games, they were anything but easy: Old Dominion stormed from down 19 to get within a point with eight minutes to play before Temple won by 11; Auburn was within two points with 10 minutes to play before Temple pulled away to win by 14 on Nov. 17.

What the Owls hadn’t done yet was handle a team for the full 40 minutes, hadn’t had a game where they put their collective feet down and didn’t let an opponent even think of a comeback.

That is, until UConn came to the Liacouras Center on Sunday evening.

The Huskies kept pace with the Owls for the first seven minutes but that was all, as Temple stormed off to an 85-57 win, its biggest victory margin of the season by far.

The Owls (11-10, 3-6 AAC) were clicking on all fronts: they shot a solid 49.2 percent overall (31-of-63) and 40 percent (10-of-25) from 3-point range, had 20 assists to only five turnovers, forced 16 UConn turnovers and placed four players in double figures.

“We felt like we had a poor performance versus Cincinnati, we wanted to show people that we’re a good team also,” said junior guard Shizz Alston Jr. who had 18 points. “it just shows that we have our stuff together.”

It was quite the reversal from the Owls’ last game, a 75-42 beatdown at Cincinnati on Wednesday that was arguably the low point of the season so far. Temple turned it over 20 times against the Bearcats; Alston and senior point guard Josh Brown had six apiece in the loss, but each had four assists and no turnovers in Sunday night’s win.

“It’s two different games,” Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. “Wednesday, we did not play very well on either side of the ball, we turned it over 20 times, tonight we turned it over five times. You’re away one time, you’re home the next. We just didn’t play very well at Cincinnati, and we paid the price.”

Trailing by four seven minutes in, Temple went on a 7-0 run to seize the lead for the final time. An 8-0 run immediately after pushed the advantage to nine, and a 9-0 run just after that left Temple up 16 with a minute left in the half, which ended with the Owls leading 38-24.

Fifteen minutes off didn’t bother Temple, which went on a 10-0 run early in the second half to go up 23 points; six straight by UConn got the advantage down to 17, but Temple got the lead back to 20 with 10 minutes to play and it never again got lower.

“We just kept at it, kept the pressure up, didn’t let down,” said senior forward Obi Enechionyia, who had nine points and 10 rebounds, eight offensive. “We’ve had opportunities to have games like this this season as well as a lot of games since I’ve been at Temple, we just took our foot off the pedal, and tonight we didn’t. If we just keep the pressure, we can have more games like this.”

Sophomore wing Quinton Rose had 17 points for Temple, and junior center Ernest Aflakpui had a season-high 13 points for the Owls.


Nate Pierre-Louis had 12 points and five rebounds off the bench in Temple's win. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

Dunphy’s squad also benefited from a strong performance by two freshmen off the bench. Nate Pierre-Louis (12 points, five rebounds) and J.P. Moorman (six points, five rebounds) have become valuable members of rotation of late, and when they’re productive, it’s a much deeper Temple rotation.

“Every one of the freshmen, they’ve got good energy, good enthusiasm, they’ve done good work,” Dunphy said. “They deserve to play more minutes than they’ve been playing.”

As encouraging as Sunday’s effort was for the Owls, it doesn’t change what’s been Temple’s biggest issue so far this season: consistency.

Temple began the year 4-1 with wins over South Carolina, Clemson and Auburn, but not to long after dropped six of eight to fall to 8-9 overall and 1-5 in AAC play. They’ve battled back with wins in four of their last six to get back above .500, but haven’t been able to string together three wins or more since the first three games of the year.

To try to maintain their momentum, the Owls will have to take down No. 17 Wichita State (17-4, 7-2) on Thursday night before traveling to Tulane on Sunday to play a Green Wave team that beat Temple 85-75 on its home court on Dec. 28.

“Playing a good game like this, it kind of gives us momentum, going into (the Wichita State) game, which we need,” Enechionyia said. “Especially coming off a loss like at Cincinnati, this game was huge for us. We’re going to look to build on that momentum and go into that game with the same mindset we did today.”


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