City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Ever since Obi Enechionyia started the year off as scorching hot as any player in the country over the season’s opening seven games and then suddenly cooled off, Temple has been looking for a go-to scorer.

Lately, Shizz Alston Jr. has stepped up to the challenge.

The Owls’ sophomore guard followed up back-to-back 25-point outings with another terrific night, dropping 22 points as Temple downed Memphis 77-66 on Wednesday evening.

After scoring a grand total of 63 points as a freshman, he’s now Temple’s leading scorer (14.2 ppg), pouring in a total of 72 points over his team’s last three games.

“Main thing, I’m just trying to win,” Alston said. “We lost a couple in a row, so I’m just trying to win the best way I know how.”

“Shizz is a player who constantly is growing, he’s growing right in front of our eyes,” senior Mark Williams said. “The thing I see that’s best improved his is poise, whenever we get down in the shot clock or down in games, Shizz is managing games for us, making huge shots, shooting the ball really well. He’s playing huge for us.”

Early in the season, Alston Jr. flashed the scoring ability he’d displayed during his prep years at The Haverford School, but hadn’t had a chance to break out during a freshman year spent mostly as a deep reserve on the Owls.

Though he scored 14 points in the season opener against La Salle and then 17 a few games later against Manhattan, it wasn’t until a 22-point effort on national TV against then-No. 25 Florida State that he really showed what he was capable of against high-level competition.

Against the Seminoles, now ranked No. 6 in the country, Alston scored 22 points, dishing out four assists without a turnover in the NIT Season Tip-Off semifinals in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The next night out, against current No. 18 West Virginia, Alston had eight points to go along with six assists against one of the toughest defenses in the country.

“I think we all played very well against West Virginia or we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to win the game, but (Alston) was terrific in that game,” Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. “He was spectacular; I thought the day before against Florida State, so I think that weekend he really came of age.”

Wednesday night, Alston got Temple (11-10, 2-6) going early in the second half with back-to-back 3-pointers from the left wing, helping the Owls turn what had been a 30-30 game at halftime into a 44-34 within the first four minutes out of the locker rooms.

A few minutes later, Temple expanded the lead to a dozen on a third Alston triple, and the advantage got as large as 14 with 6:30 to play.

“I (was) relatively quiet in the first half,” Alston said, “so I wanted to come out and be aggressive, make a statement, and try to go on a little run.”

What Alston started against Memphis (15-6, 5-3 American), Williams and fellow senior Daniel Dingle finished off. The pair combined for 31 points, including 18 in the second half.

Williams, celebrating his birthday -- the Temple student section serenaded him with a rendition of “Happy Birthday” during a Memphis free-throw in the second half -- scored 10 points in the final six minutes alone.

“All we needed was a win, that’s what I told the guys, all I wanted for my birthday was a win, he said. “And we got it, so, best birthday ever.”

Enechionyia, Temple’s junior forward who started off the season averaging nearly 20 ppg over its first seven games, had yet another rough shooting night (3-9 FG, 1-6 3PT) for seven points, dropping his scoring average (13.8 ppg) to second on the team for the first time all season.

“I thought he passed up three open looks in the first half, that I think is just a matter of getting that confidence back,” Dunphy said. “There’s nothing you can do about it other than keep working at it and watching more film and studying yourself and stepping up and making shots at the right time.

The win snapped a three-game losing streak for Temple, which had lost six of its first seven American Athletic Conference games.

The Owls are playing without senior guard Josh Brown, who looks headed for a redshirt as he’s missed all but five December games as he recovered from an Achillies injury suffered in the offseason. Dunphy only played seven on Wednesday night, and the rotation hasn’t gone much deeper than eight for the majority of the season.

If they’re going to try to salvage the last 10 games of the regular season it starts with a tough road trip to Saturday in Houston, where they’ll face a Cougars squad that’s 14-7 (5-4) before heading to face Tulane (4-16, 1-7) on Tuesday.

“I know after we won in Brooklyn we rallied, about five or six in a row. I feel like this game was like that, a game that will push us over the top,” Alston said.

“I hope it helps us, we’re going to find out when we go to Houston on Saturday,” Dunphy said. “It’s a really challenging trip for us so we’re going to find out exactly how much this helped us.”