City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Khalif Battle was Temple’s leading scorer last year, but he wasn’t the leading scorer. It’s a subtle but important difference, the one between a player who ends up atop his team’s stat sheet at the end of the season by circumstance and the one who ends up there by attitude.

This season, he’s making the transition.

“His intensity overall, I think that’s picked up immensely,” teammate Jeremiah Williams said. “You can just tell he wants to win.”

Battle continued his scorching start to his third collegiate season, dropping a season-high 29 points as Temple came from behind to eek past Delaware, 75-74 at the Liacouras Center on Saturday night.

It was the fourth 20-point outing in six games for Battle, who’s scored at least 19 points in all but one of the Owls’ outings. It was an impressive showing: the 6-foot-4 guard shot 10-of-18 from the floor, making two of his three 3-point attempts and all but one of his eight free-throws.

Battle also hit the most important shot in the game, a 3-pointer with 2:08 remaining that was the game’s 18th and final lead change, putting the Owls up 69-67. A minute later, a leak-out dunk off one of Delaware’s 17 turnovers put Temple up four.

It was punctuated with a gesture to the crowd of about four thousand, firing up the Owls’ faithful who’d stuck through the evening. After going through a COVID season full of empty gyms or opposing fans, Battle’s certainly grateful to have some supporters at his back.

“I was already used to the Philadelphia culture in terms of basketball,” he said, referencing his summers spent with Team Final, long the area’s only Nike-backed travel program. “I’d have arguments before games about the Palestra with the high school guys .. [about how they ]got the big crowds and all that. I’ll probably text the guys later, ‘y’all was right, Philly’s got some good crowds.’”

A graduate of Trenton Catholic (N.J.), Battle started his collegiate career at Butler, where he averaged only 3.0 ppg in 24 games as a freshman in 2019-20. He transferred to Temple during the COVID summer and appeared in 11 games last year with four starts, averaging 15.0 ppg by the end of year thanks to some big February outings. But they weren’t efficient outings: he only made 34.9% of his shots, including a 31.5% rate from the 3-point arc. 

After his outing against the Blue Hens, Battle’s shooting 53.8% overall (43-of-80) and 47.4% from the 3-point arc (18-of-38). He’s tops amongst all players in the American Athletic Conference in scoring and second in shooting percentage, even when factoring in a four-point game against Clemson, the only team thus far to successfully slow him down.

Battle (above) is the leading scorer amongst all American Athletic Conference men's basketball players. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

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But he can’t pinpoint exactly what changed this offseason, to turn him from a volume scorer into suddenly one of the more dangerous off-guards in the Northeast.

“I just thank God that he’s putting me in this position, I can’t take all the credit for that, you know,” he said. “Sometimes I just shoot the ball and it goes in; I don’t know, just [say] thank you.

“I didn’t go home this summer, I stayed back and worked with Coach McKie; I was disappointed about how I looked last year, I’m really hard on myself, I want a lot for myself. I still think I left a lot of money on the table [tonight] in terms of points, rebounds, defensively. I still have got to get back in the lab and work on a few things, watch film.”

“He’s getting better, and sometimes I would like for him to be patient, but he’s not wired that way,” McKie said. “Most guys that can score the ball like him are not wired like that, which is okay, because we desperately need it.”

Against Delaware, he got his production on all sorts of nifty finishes, through traffic and around it, hitting from the mid-range and from deep. There were reverses and kisses off the glass, a 3-point play or two, and some physical drives.

Battle’s Owls (3-3) struggled for much of the game against its visitor from the Colonial Athletic Association, as the Blue Hens (4-3) led for more than 27 minutes, going up by as many as 11 early in the second half. Kevin Anderson (26 points), who knocked in a 3-pointer with five seconds left to provide for the final margin, and former Villanova big man Dylan Painter (21 points) both had strong nights, as did Haverford School product Jameer Nelson Jr. (13 points, 11 rebounds).

Temple battled back in large part due to its star guard, who had 20 points after halftime, not once going to the bench. Battle wasn’t the only double-figure scorer, but he was by far the most efficient; Damian Dunn added 13 on 5-of-17 shooting while Jeremiah Williams needed 13 shots to get his 11 points.

Battle was hesitant to take too much credit.

“We’ve got four other guys that can score,” he said. “I’m not the team, we’ve got a team full of great guys who are in the gym every day, we all have the utmost faith in each other to get the job done and I trust they can do it when the time comes.”

But right now, he’s by far their best offensive option. Dunn is shooting 32.7% on 2-point attempts and 3-of-12 from behind the arc, Williams is going through his own version of the sophomore slump, and the Owls’ frontcourt has been looking for some kind of consistent scoring output. 

McKie’s got a hot hand, and he’s willing to ride it for the time being. With Big 5 games coming up against La Salle (Dec. 1) and Penn (Dec. 4), both at the Liacouras Center, look for Battle to do what he can to keep it rolling.

“You would love to have a guy that you can say here you go man, bring it home for me, and that gives you a sense of comfort sitting over there as a coach rather than sitting over there frantic, saying what am I going to do?” McKie said. “But with experience, those guys will get better at that, they’ll know where they’re most comfortable at, at the end of a game,with the ball in their hands, on the floor. 

“As I said earlier on, we’re still a work in progress.”