Five takeaways from Temple's 79-71 loss to SMU
1. Brendan Barry brings a legitimate shooting presence:
Brendan Barry continues to prove to be a valuable scoring threat for Temple. Especially when the rest of the team is struggling to find the bottom of the net. The Dartmouth grad transfer connected on five of his 10 attempts from 3-point land and finished the night with a team-high 17 points. Having guys that can shoot with consistency from the perimeter opens up the floor and will make Temple multi-faceted at that end of the floor.
“I’m still finding my rhythm and finding my place on this team,” Barry said after the loss to SMU. “Credit to the guys on the team and the coaches for accelerating that process and I think it’s only going to get better for me.”
2. Temple severely limited Kendric Davis for much of the night:
Temple had its hands full defensively having to guard the second-best scorer in The American, Kendric Davis. Davis couldn’t get anything going in the first half with just two points headed into the locker room, forcing SMU to look elsewhere for scoring. The 5-11 guard found his groove in the second half pouring in 11 more points including a couple of big shots that helped the Mustangs pull away late in the contest.
“Overall I thought we did a pretty good job on him, he’s an all-conference player,” Temple head coach Aaron McKie said postgame. “I thought Jeremiah [Williams], Tai [Strickland] and everybody else that guarded him took on that challenge. We tried to mix up some coverages against him. Anytime he was in a ball screen, we wanted to show on him and use our size against him.”
3. Damian Dunn learned a lot from the loss to Houston:
Redshirt freshman guard Damian Dunn got himself back on track in the loss to SMU with 15 points. He made his presence felt offensively pouring in 18 points in the season opener, seemingly getting to the free-throw line at will. In his first real test against a conference foe, Dunn struggled to draw contact or make anything happen offensively, finishing with seven points in the loss to Houston.
“There’s going to be different challenges and different coverages thrown at me the whole season,” Dunn said. “The Houston game was really my first time in my whole basketball career seeing guys doing their best to rattle me and get me out of my game as much as Houston did.”
Dunn added that he watched film of the Houston game three times a day for three days following the loss. Him being able to get to the charity stripe and draw contact will be instrumental for Temple’s success offensively.
4. Temple can’t afford to get into foul trouble:
Foul trouble has become a persistent issue for the Owls through their first three games. Junior forward Jake Forrester and redshirt sophomore big man Arashma Parks each got into foul trouble in Temple’s first two outings, forcing McKie to play some semblance of small-ball. Against SMU, it was Dunn that joined the club, fouling out with less than two minutes remaining.
“Sometimes you get caught up in the speed of the game and you got guys sticking their hands in there,” McKie said of the recurring foul trouble. “I’m comfortable when guys drive, us getting our hands up in the air and forcing players to make shots over the top of us. Not giving them the best of both worlds where they get fouled and have an opportunity to finish a play off. If we’re going to foul, let’s foul. If not, make those guys finish over the top of us.”
5. Temple struggled to defend the interior:
Limiting the scoring prowess of Davis was such a pivotal part of Temple’s gameplan that the Mustangs were compelled to find other ways to attack. On top of that, foul trouble from Forrester thinned out the frontcourt calling for a smaller lineup from the Owls. Both of those things allowed for more efficient penetration in the interior leading to 40 points in the paint from SMU.
“I thought our problems came with knowing shooting vs. driver,” McKie said. “Sometimes we rotated off the shooter to go running to the driver and the driver was passing to the shooter and making those shots. We had too many bad closeouts where they were beating us and getting to the middle of the paint where they were converting.”