City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Temple is used to life on the bubble.

The Owls flirted with NCAA contention in 2014-15, ultimately coming up one win short of hearing their name called on Selection Sunday nearly one year ago.

Now they’re right back in that grey area of “will they dance or won’t they”, despite being one win away from a regular-season conference championship.

A 72-62 win over Memphis on Thursday night improved Temple to 19-10 overall and 13-4 in the American Athletic Conference. That’s good enough to be in the running for a coveted spot in the the NCAA’s field of 68, but not nearly good enough to feel anywhere close to safe with at most four games remaining until Selection Sunday.

No matter what, the win means Temple will be the top seed in next weekend’s AAC tournament; the only other team with the same league record, SMU, is ineligible for the postseason. But that’s a relatively small prize compared to the bigger goal of making up for the disappointment of last year.

“(It) means a lot, but we’ve got a lot more work to do,” junior point guard Josh Brown said. “We’re not settling for the No. 1 seed, just going to continue to win games and make our bid for the tournament.”

Brown was one of five Temple players in double figures on Thursday, finishing with 12 points; seniors Jaylen Bond (15 points), Quenton DeCosey (13) and Devin Coleman (12) plus sophomore Obi Enechionyia (10) all joined him.

The 6-foot-3 point guard from St. Anthony (N.J.) was impressive in all facets, finishing with eight assists and seven rebounds while going without a turnover. Over the last eight games, he’s registered 44 assists to only five turnovers, and has risen into the top 10 nationally in assist-to-turnover ratio.

After two years learning behind Will Cummings, Brown has taken full control of the Temple offense and is running it better than he has at any point in his career.

“He’s got a terrific IQ--if he comes to the sideline and says ‘let’s run zipper,’ we run zipper, that’s what we do,” Dunphy said. “Because he’s worked long and hard at it and he’s really got a nice way about him and I think he’s got nice leadership as well. He’s been terrific.”

As a team, Temple turned it over a season-low-tying five times against Memphis, helping the Owls overcome a sub-par (5-for-22) performance from 3-point range to emerge with the win.

That’s only four below their season average (9.1/game), the best mark in the country.

“I’m just trying to take care of the ball, try not to hurt the team, myself,” Brown said. “I know if we don’t turn over the ball, we don’t hurt ourselves and doing that helps us.”

Memphis scored the first point against Temple but the home squad responded with nine straight and led the rest of the way through.

The lead, which was 39-30 at halftime, grew to as many as 13 in the second half before the Tigers rallied to within three in the final five minutes.

But the Owls’ defense held at that point, limiting Memphis to a single field goal over a four-minute stretch.

Coleman hit the back-breaker with 1:35 remaining, staring down a Memphis defender from the left wing before pulling up and burying a triple to put his team up seven.

“Five-for-22 isn’t great, but we’ve been a pretty good timely shooting team, I think the timeliness of our making shots has been pretty good throughout (the season),” Dunphy said. “Hopefully we can continue it.”

All that’s left in the regular season is a road trip to AAC cellar-dwellar Tulane (10-20, 3-14) on Sunday. A win gives the program its 20th win for the 36th time, and means the Owls would enter the postseason having won nine of 11 games; the reverse decision would be catastrophic for their remaining at-large hopes.

“A loss would really hurt our resume for the NCAA tournament,” DeCosey said. “We’ve just got to go with the same mind set, just don’t take them lightly and just go in, try to get the win.”

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Owls honor quartet on Senior Night
As the last home game of the season, Temple’s win over Memphis also counted as the school’s Senior Night, with a quartet of graduating players honored along with several managers in a pre-game ceremony.

This year’s class consisted of two four-year scholarship players, Devontae Watson (Lincoln Park, Pa.) and Quenton DeCosey (St. Joseph’s-Metuchen, N.J.) plus transfers Jaylen Bond (Plymouth-Whitemarsh, Pa./Texas) and Devin Coleman (Friends’ Central, Pa./Clemson).

The only member of the senior class who isn’t a part of the team’s regular rotation, Watson joined Coleman, Bond, Brown and DeCosey in the starting lineup for the third time all season. A 6-foot-11 center out of Lincoln Park (Pa.), Watson has started 50 games over his career, including a good portion of his sophomore and junior seasons, but has spent the vast majority of his senior season on the bench.

His slam dunk 32 seconds into the game, Temple’s first bucket, was also good for his first points of the season.

“Talk about Devontae, because of how difficult this year has been for him and he’s stayed the course,” Dunphy said. “He’s the first guy after the game shaking my hand congrats and all that stuff. He didn’t get a chance to play that much, tonight I was happy for him to get off to a good start, the quick dunk and everything.

“All these guys, they’ve put a lot of time into our program,” he continued. “Obviously Devontae and Q for four full years and Jaylen and Devin for half of their careers. So we’re thrilled with what they’ve done, they’ve been great guys to coach and great people to represent Temple University.”

Watson played six minutes in his final Liacouras appearance, finishing with those two points. Bond had his eighth double-double of the season with 15 points and 10 rebounds, and DeCosey added a dozen to move up to 1,443 for his career, one behind Bruce Drysdale for 24th on the program’s all-time list.

“Just knowing that it’s going to be your last game in Liacouras, it just becomes surreal, just knowing how fast it went by,” DeCosey said of his emotions before the game. “Just cherishing the moment and living in the moment.”