City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Two months into the season, it’s still not clear what exactly to make of Temple.

The Owls are capable of playing very good basketball, as they’ve shown numerous times; most recently beating two ranked teams, Cincinnati and Connecticut, on the road in the last two weeks.

Then there’s the dark side, the team that got blown out by 27 at the hands of Houston on its home court and has appeared for long stretches in other games as well.

Both of those teams took the court against East Carolina on Saturday night, one for the first 19 minutes or so and the other for the closing 20 and change. The balance was in favor of Temple’s positive side, however, and it made a big difference in a 78-60 win over ECU on Saturday evening in an American Athletic Conference clash.

With the Owls (8-6, 3-1 AAC) trailing by 11 with 1:44 left in the first half, Devin Coleman hit two shots that would turn the game around. The senior guard’s first triple with more than a minute left brought a little life back into the Liacouras Center, but the next--a runner at the buzzer after a great outlet pass from Jaylen Bond--made it a five-point game at halftime

“I was just trying to make some shots, do anything I could to help the team,” he said. “The one at the end gave us some energy going into the second half, so that was great, we got some momentum there that we carried along throughout the second half, and we were able to blow the game open.”

The second half was almost all Temple. After making 41 percent from the floor in the first half (12-of-29), the Owls made nearly 59 percent (17-of-29) in the second. East Carolina (8-8, 0-3) had almost the opposite numbers, shooting just over 59 percent (16-of-27) in the first half and just above 30 percent (8-of-26) in the second.

What that amounted to in practice was a 12-0 Temple run to start the half and a 21-4 stretch that all but closed it out, taking a 50-50 game midway through the period and making it a 17-point game with under four minutes left. A zone offense that had frustrated the Owls time and time again early on suddenly was no problem whatsoever.

“I thought our passing was pretty good in the first half, I thought we had some decent looks but we didn’t get it in the middle of the floor as well as we did in the second half,” Dunphy said. “We had a couple really good plays in the second half in the middle of the floor. But guys stepped up and made shots...it looks like you really have your act together when you make shots.”

Of course, it helps when senior wing Quenton DeCosey is on his game, as he was against East Carolina; the 6-5 St. Joseph’s-Metuchen product was 8-of-13 overall, and 5-of-8 from 3-point range for his game-high 24 points. And Coleman’s five 3-pointers (on 11 attempts) was a career-best for the Friends’ Central alum, who finished with 17 of his own.

Both really got it going after halftime, combining for 28 of their 41 points in the closing 20 minutes. And though the players insisted that it’s their ability to get stops that helps them get better offense, their coach sees it the other way around.

“I think we’re a much better defensive team when we’re a better offensive team,” Dunphy said. “When shots are going, we seem to be juiced. When we’re not going, we need to understand that we have to be great defensively all the time.

“That being said, I think we were very, very good against UConn on Tuesday, we need some more work because we’ve got a great week ahead of us with Memphis and Cincinnati here,” he continued, referencing a game where the Owls managed only 55 points but won by limiting the Huskies to 53.

They need to be consistently good on the defensive end, as their offense doesn’t have a clear focal strength 14 games into the year.

They’re not a dominant inside scoring team, not with the 6-7 Bond (9.7 ppg, 7.8 rpg) and 6-8 sophomore Obi Enechionyia (9.4 ppg) their two best options up front. And they haven’t been a tremendous 3-point shooting team (31.8 percent), so taking 33 triples like they did against East Carolina won’t be a steady diet for success, either.

So the answer has to be a steady amount of high-percentage shots in transition and at the rim, which of course starts with play on the other end of the court.

Coleman brought up the idea of “defensive confidence,” and it was true that once Temple strung a stop or two together, the next possessions down there seemed to be more energized than the last. If they can find a way to replicate that for 40 minutes, they’ll be in good shape.

“I think everything starts on the defensive end,” DeCosey said. “In the first half, our defense wasn’t as good and it didn’t help us on the offensive end. In the second half, we got stops and that allowed us to get out in transition.”