City of Basketball Love

Daniel Hughes (@dan1el_sun)
--

Two Big 5 rivals that could not have had more different Thanksgiving breaks will go head-to-head on City Avenue on Wednesday night.

Saint Joseph’s (3-2) is a coming off a disappointing showing at the Paradise Jam in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the Hawks dropped two games to Ole Miss and North Carolina State after beating Loyola (Ill.) in the opener. Both losses were by at least a ten-point differential.

Temple (4-2) on the other hand, beat two top-25 teams over the holiday break to win the NIT Season Tip-Off Championship in Brooklyn.

On Thanksgiving, Temple came back from an 18-point deficit against Florida State to win 89-86. The very next day, they blew a 20-point lead but still hung on to win 81-77. With those two wins, their record improves to 4-2 on the season.

“We’re very confident right now,” Owls sophomore guard Levan Alston, Jr. said. “We feel like we’re a top 25 team, so we’re not going to be satisfied until we get there.”

This year, St. Joe’s fields a young team, which has been made even younger due to injury. They view their early-season tournament experience as a growing one.

“We didn’t leave with the record we wanted, but we definitely made steps as a team,” St. Joe’s sophomore guard and team captain Lamarr “Fresh” Kimble said. “We grew every game down there, so it was a good experience.”

It will be the 159th matchup between the Hawks and the Owls. And while the two teams share a long and storied history, many of the players and coaches have personal history with members of the other side.

For instance, Alston and Kimble played on the same AAU team, Nike-backed Team Final, throughout middle and high school.

“We played with each other for probably six or seven years,” Alston said of his time with Kimble on Team Final. “We were like roommates every tournament, so we’re like close to best friends growing up.”

Now both college sophomores, they are integral parts of their respective teams and look forward to the chance to play against each other.

Kimble, a product of Neumann-Goretti, averages 14.8 points per game, while the Haverford graduate Alston puts up 12.8 points per game for the Owls.

“It will definitely be great,” Kimble said. “I know that the crowd’s going to be here and the intensity level’s going to be up, it will be a good match”

St. Joe’s sophomore Chris Clover and freshman Charlie Brown also have crossed paths with the 6-foot-4 Alston in the past. In the spring of 2014, all three played on the same team in the annual D’Onofrio Classic, along with current Penn State guard Tony Carr and Minnesota’s Ahmad Gilbert, among others.

Clover was a junior at St. Joe’s Prep, and Brown a junior at George Washington High School. Brown, who is now putting up 11.2 points per game for the Hawks, spent a year in prep school before arriving at St. Joe’s.

As Hawks head coach Phil Martelli noted before practice earlier this week, there are two very different Temple teams that could show up on Wednesday.

“In their wins they’re averaging 86 points a game, and in their two losses they’ve scored 60,” Martelli said. “So we’re going to try targeting them to 60.”

Both teams are missing key players to injury. Besides the season-long absence of sophomore forward Pierfrancesco Oliva, St. Joe’s will be without junior wing forward James Demery, who’s missed every game but the season opener with a stress fracture in his left foot. The Owls are without star senior point guard Josh Brown, who is still recovering from an Achilles tendon injury in May.

Freshman Nick Robinson has stepped in for Demery, averaging 4.8 rpg and 4.6 rpg in a supporting role.

Along with Kimble, the Hawks also lean heavily on junior guard Shavar Newkirk. Newkirk is averaging 21.8 points per game this season, and shares point guard duties with Kimble.

Meanwhile, Temple will likely rely on 6-10 junior forward Obi Enechionyia, who is putting up a menacing 20.2 points, 9.0 rebounds and 3.0 blocked shots per game.

The Owls will also utilize Alston, 6-7 redshirt senior Daniel Dingle and 6-6 freshman guard Quinton Rose as part of their seven-man rotation. Dingle boasts a 13.5 ppg average, while Rose contributes 12.8 ppg; the Bishop Kearney (N.Y.) product had 26 points against Florida State.

This is the first Big 5 game for St. Joe’s, and the second for Temple, who beat La Salle 97-92 in its season opener on November 11.

“I really count the Philadelphia games as additional league play,” Martelli said. “This game has a league intensity to it.”

The rivalry between St. Joe’s and Temple has gotten ugly in the past, but in recent years the two teams have been cordial to each other.

It also helps when two coaches have the level of respect for each other that Dunphy and Martelli have.

At the end of the day, any familiarity that the two teams have with each other has to be put aside when the game begins.

“Once the ball goes up, you’re just worried about how your guys are playing, you lose yourself in the moment of the competition,” Dunphy said. “You’ve got a job to do, let’s do our job.”