Gillespie, Wildcats too much for Temple

In a rivalry that’s been decidedly one-sided over the last six seasons, Temple looked like it had started to crack the code Sunday at a sold-out Liacouras Center against No. 15 Villanova.

The Owls were defending well, holding the Wildcats’ leading scorer, Saddiq Bey, in check and enjoying a four-point halftime lead.

They just needed an answer for Collin Gillespie, but they never found it.

Gillespie, Villanova’s sharp-shooting junior guard, killed Temple to the tune of a game-high 29 points on 11 of 19 shooting and 7 of 11 from 3-point range as the Wildcats eventually cruised to a 76-56 win that earned them the Big 5 championship.

Villanova, which improved to 19-6 overall and a perfect 4-0 in the Big 5, has now won its last seven games against Temple, with the Owls’ last win coming at the Pavilion back in 2012. The Wildcats have won those last seven games by an average margin of victory of 18 points.

Temple (13-12, 2-2 in the Big 5) got the game it needed from senior wing forward Quinton Rose, who scored a team-high 22 points, including 14 in the first half. And considering the Owls have been a slow-starting team that had been outscored by 58 points collectively in the first half this season, the four-point halftime lead was an encouraging sign.

Villanova, however, made quick work of any good vibes in the building by unwrapping a 20-2 run to start the second half that decided the game. Six of the Wildcats’ seven buckets in that span were 3-pointers, with Gillespie only doing a fraction of the damage. He did hit a 3-pointer along the way, but forward Jermaine Samuels scored eight of his 13 points in that stretch, and Justin Moore’s two 3-pointers capped it and pushed the Wildcats out to a 14-point lead with 14:14 left to go before Temple head coach Aaron McKie called a timeout.

Rose eventually cut the deficit to seven on a layup that made it a 49-42 game with 10:04 to go, but the Owls never got any closer the rest of the way.

A dejected Nate Pierre-Louis, who posted a double-double of 16 points and 11 rebounds, held himself accountable for Gillespie’s numbers because he was matched up with him for much of the game.

“I put a lot of the blame on myself,” the junior guard said. “I take full responsibility. I feel like I lost him a couple times in the second half, and he got easy shots. He started hitting shots. But I was there, I was contesting. I did my job on a lot of those possessions, but I take full responsibility …”

“You’ve also got to tip your cap,” Rose said, cutting in with his view of Gillespie’s performance. “He made a lot of tough shots.”

But Villanova’s game-deciding run was evidence that the Wildcats just had too many pieces for Temple to contend with beyond Gillespie. And Saturday was also more evidence that the Owls just can’t get much going offensively and with any consistency. Beyond Rose’s 22 and Pierre-Louis’ 16, no other Temple player scored more than seven points, and those came from junior guard Monty Scott, who came back to earth after scoring 22 and 16 points in the last two games.

After the Owls held the Wildcats to 33 percent shooting (9 of 27) in the first half, Villanova shot 56.3 percent overall and nearly 62 percent (13 of 21) from 3-point range over the last 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Temple shot just 36.7 percent overall and an anemic 2 of 16 from 3-point range throughout the game, with those long-range makes coming from Scott and freshman guard Josh Pierre-Louis.

With standout freshman forward Jeremiah Robinson-Earl and Moore playing a little more than 10 combined minutes in the first half due to each of them picking up two fouls, Gillespie had to shoulder much of the load himself and did.

But when they returned for the start of the second half, things opened up in what Villanova coach Jay Wright called “a more free-wheeling offense.” Temple, conversely, came unraveled quickly. The Owls opened the second half with three straight turnovers and Villanova got 3-pointers from Samuels, Robinson-Earl and Gillespie before the Owls got their first shot.

“We had a couple of defensive miscues,” Rose said, “and they made us pay for them.”

And the turnovers?

“If you turn it over three times,” he said, “that’s just asking for them to go on a run.”

Junior wing forwards De’Vondre Perry and J.P. Moorman were back in the lineup after recovering from toe and hip injuries, respectively, but both came off the bench and neither proved to be a factor Sunday. They collectively shot 0-for-6 from the floor, 0-for-4 from beyond the arc and went scoreless in a combined 30 minutes of action.

Temple did manage to hold the 6-foot-8 Bey, Villanova’s leading scorer coming into the day at 15.7 points per game, to just nine points on 3 of 13 shooting and 1 of 7 from 3-point range.

“He hasn’t had a night like that this year,” Wright said.

But after going a combined 1 of 5 for four points in the first half, Samuels, Robinson-Earl and Moore teamed to finish with 32 points on 50 percent (11 of 22) shooting.

And Gillespie delivered his share of second-half daggers as well, hitting a bucket in the paint after Rose had cut Villanova’s lead to seven and then pushing the Wildcats’ lead out to 14 with 6:20 left to play after Scott had gotten the Owls within 11.

McKie refused to let Pierre-Louis shoulder all of the blame for Gillespie’s prolific shooting.

“I have no issues with Nate and what he does out there on the defensive side,” McKie said. “Gillespie was just great. And sometimes when you’re playing against guys like that, you’re not going to have any answers.”

“Gillespie, he trumped us this afternoon,” McKie added. “He just made some tough shots.”

And aside from Rose and Nate Pierre-Louis, no one else in a Temple uniform could say the same.

“It’s been like a revolving door for us with that,” McKie said. “You would hope that you would get more consistency from it. Guys get looks, be confident and knock them down. It’s really been like our Achilles’ heel.

“But we understand coming into games what we have to do to win games. We have to be perfect on the defensive side, and I thought we were good in the first half. And it just wasn’t there in the second half.”

Rose has now gone his entire career without beating Villanova. The Owls’ 10-point loss on the Main Line last December was their closest miss.

“Yeah, it definitely will,” Rose said when asked if not beating Villanova in his four years at Temple will bother him. “Moving forward, it will.”

Putbacks: Villanova coach Jay Wright was asked about his impressions of the Temple program in Aaron McKie’s first year as the Owls’ head coach.

“I think (McKie is) a great combination of Fran Dunphy and John Chaney,” Wright said. “You can see they have certain aspects of both of them, and really good aspects. They’re going to be really good, and they are a really good team.”

“I don’t want him to be really good here,” Wright added with a smile, “but he will be.”

Temple lost despite outscoring Villanova in the paint by 32-16, and the Wildcats won although they got just six points from their bench. … Villanova outrebounded Temple by 40-31. … The Owls had just nine assists on 22 made baskets.