City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Temple’s played giant-killer often enough under Fran Dunphy that even a season-opening game against No. 1 North Carolina didn’t seem that daunting of a task.

And even though Dunphy needed to play three freshmen double-digit minutes, and even though one of the team’s potential breakout stars was unavailable due to injury, the Owls hung tough for long stretches of what should be their toughest game all year along.

Sure, the Tar Heels were able to run away for a 91-67 victory, a score that seems about right when comparing a team with national championship hopes against one that’s just hoping to be in the discussion for an NCAA tournament berth four months from now.

It wasn’t a blowout, which was about the only potential downfall for Temple heading into a nationally-televised game at the Naval Academy. Young teams can lose confidence easily, but Dunphy has some things feel good about as they move on with their still-new season.

Most notably was a breakout offensive performance from senior guard Devin Coleman, who scored 19 points in 21 minutes before missing much of the second half with cramping issues. Coleman, a 6-3 lefty out of Friends’ Central, averaged under four points per game in his first season at Temple last year; he spent the first two years of his college career at Clemson before transferring home in 2013.

After earning the starting shooting guard role in the weeks running up to the season, Coleman looked like he had something to prove going up against a team from his former conference.

“I feel like I was always pretty confident,” he said. “A couple shots went down, started feeling good, so I tried to carry that momentum throughout the time that I was in the game.”

Finishing second to Coleman in scoring was one of those three freshmen, backup point guard Levan Shawn Alston, Jr. Playing 15 minutes in relief of Brown, Alston scored a dozen points in his college debut, shooting 5-of-7 from the floor including 2-of-4 on his 3-point attempts.

Another freshman, Trey Lowe, had eight points and two assists, though he did miss a wide-open layup in the second half; the 6-6 wing did recover to knock down a corner trey on Temple’s next possession. The final freshman, big man Ernest Aflakpui, finished with two points and two rebounds in 12 minutes of action, picking up only one foul.

Dunphy called his freshmen “fearless” in a tough atmosphere that was largely pro-North Carolina despite Navy’s campus being much closer to Philadelphia than Chapel Hill.

“I thought they did a really good job, all three of them,” the 11th-year head coach said. “Ern got handled down there a few times on the defensive end, but I thought he made a great play inside for a layup, and he’s going to get better and better as the year goes on. That’s a tremendous learning experience, for those three guys especially.”

If Coleman and the freshmen are providing significant help to DeCosey (11 points) and Brown (five points) this season, Temple’s offense might just be alright.

Even a lackluster performance by the forward group isn’t a huge red flag, at least not yet.

Temple isn’t going to face any more frontcourts like the one they saw on Friday night in UNC’s Kennedy Meeks and Brice Johnson, both of whom finished with double-doubles; the pair combined for 41 points on 16-of-23 shooting, with 21 rebounds.

As a team, the Tar Heels out-rebounded the Owls 49-32, including pulling 15 rebounds on the offensive end.

“I think they just had a lot of depth inside and they just kept throwing guys at us,” senior wing Quenton DeCosey said. “Our big guys were getting in foul trouble. I think their depth at the inside position hurt us.”

It was a rough night for Temple's starting forwards, both seniors. Jaylen Bond had two points on 1-of-8 shooting to go along with eight rebounds, while starting center Devontae Watson picked up three fouls in seven first-half minutes and never saw the court again.

“We weren’t as good as we needed to be rebounding the basketball, no question about it, against that size and athleticism,” Dunphy added.

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Enechionyia misses opener
Bad news came down for Temple just a few hours before tipoff, as it was announced that sophomore forward Obi Enechionyia would miss the game with an ankle injury.

The 6-foot-8 sophomore forward was expected to become one of the key pieces for the Owls this year after averaging 5.3 ppg and 3.6 rpg a year ago, with his ability to guard multiple spots on the floor and stretch defenses with his shooting.

“I hope it’s next week, hoping when we go to Puerto Rico he’ll be ready to go,” Dunphy said, referencing the team’s appearance in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off starting with a Nov. 19 game against Minnesota in the first round.

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What can Brown do for you?
There was a lot of attention focused in the run-up to this game on the play of Brown, who now as a junior is stepping into the full-time starting point guard role after a promising first two years as a reserve.

It wasn’t the 6-3 guard’s best night, as he finished 2-of-7 for his five points, including just 1-of-5 from the 3-point arc, but his shot selection was good—as was his assist-to-turnover ratio, with six dimes against two mistakes.

"I like those numbers," Dunphy said. "He had one turnover in the first half that hurt us, right in front of our bench, you just can’t do that. I don’t think he’ll do that very many times, but I think he’s doing well. As I said to everybody before, he’s our hardest worker and you’re rooting like crazy for him."