City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Diane Richardson’s favorite phrase is a no-brainer to determine. 

The Temple coach throws around “equal opportunity” like she trademarked it, her system’s intent clear — everybody gets touches, everybody plays. But it wasn’t something she was able to employ her first year on North Broad, injuries and defections leading her to lean heavily on her top few players. This offseason, she promised, with a roster nearly double the size of last year’s, those opportunities would even out.

Monday night’s season opener against Delaware State provided a good glimpse of what she was talking about.

With Richardson able to liberally substitute through her rotation, the Owls smoked the Hornets, jumping out to a big early lead and running away to a 109-43 win. 

Everybody in the top 10 made a significant contribution, eight different players finishing in double digits. The Owls had 24 assists on 36 buckets, shot 53.8% (43-of-80) overall and 38.7% (12-of-31) from deep. They forced 28 turnovers, grabbed 20 offensive boards, dominated both the glass (47-23) and turnover battle (28-6).

“Equal opportunity offense, everybody scored, everybody that entered the game scored, so we’re really pleased about that,” Richardson said. “I’m really excited about what they did today and their production.”

Delaware State (0-1) was outmatched in almost every way against Temple (1-0), which opened up with the game’s first nine points, had a 30-6 first-quarter lead and never looked back.

It was the program’s first time with 100 points in a game in nearly eight years and its largest margin of victory in a season opener ever. The margin and point total were second-most in program history, the eight in double figures the most in program history.

Temple didn’t look like the team that went 11-18 a year ago, helped out by an influx of seven newcomers joining a core of six returners. It got production from up and down the roster.

“Everybody can score, that’s the blessing with our team,” said Nelson, who had to play nearly every minute of every game last year, but was able to have a much more casual night with 10 points in 22 minutes. “It’s good to, not lay back, but you know what I mean, to have a team where you don’t know who’s going to be hot on any given night, and I think that’s what makes us really hard to guard.”

Even with the disparity in talent, quite a few positives shined through for the Owls. Chief amongst them was the performance of the team’s two freshmen: Jaleesa Molina and Tristen Taylor.

Taylor, a 5-foot-7 point guard from Texas, led the Owls with eight assists and four steals, adding those to five points and three rebounds collected in 18 minutes of work.

Molina, a 6-2 forward from the Netherlands, led the Owls with 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting, hitting her only 3-point attempt. She grabbed six rebounds, five of which came on the offensive end.

They were far from alone.

Senior wing Ines Piper, who averaged 3.9 points and 4.5 rebounds per game a year ago, set new career bests in both scoring (15) and rebounding (11) as she recorded her first Division I double-double. 

Senior guard Kendall Currence, who missed all of last season with an ACL injury after transferring from Boston University Northeastern, made her Temple debut with 10 points on 4-of-7 shooting, swiping a couple of steals. Graduate forward Rayne Tucker, who also sat out last season due to her NCAA eligibility waiver getting denied, added 10 points and three boards of her own. 

Vanderbilt transfer Demi Washington (11 points, six rebounds), senior guard Tarriyonna Gary (11 points) and junior wing Tiarra East (12 points) rounded out the team’s double-figure scorers.

“Hats off to this team, we talked about who’s in our huddle and they demonstrated who’s in the huddle, they played for each other,” Richardson said. “I’m really pleased at what we did today. Broke a lot of records. But we’re just beginning, this is Game 1 of 30, we’re just beginning.”

The Owls face a much stiffer test Thursday as Georgetown comes to visit. Beating a MEAC team is one thing; beating one from the Big East, even one that finished near the bottom of the league last year, is another entirely. 

“What we don’t want to do is think this is going to be the rest of the season,” Richardson said. “We had a great first game, but it’s the first game. We’ve got to be prepared for every game and every opponent that we see. And all of them will be different.”