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Published Feb 8, 2019
Justyn Hamilton is turning potential into production for Temple
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John DiCarlo  •  OwlScoop
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Despite playing sparingly over the early part of his Temple career, Justyn Hamilton’s name kept coming up - oftentimes unsolicited – by his teammates and even his coaches.

In talking about him Wednesday night, Owls coach Fran Dunphy was asked about his 6-foot-10, 190-pound sophomore big man and said something he had said before.

“Over the last couple years,” Dunphy said, “there’s been a lot of people who have come to practice who were impressed with Justyn, maybe even when he was not getting a lot of opportunity.

“But they could see that there’s something there that’s going to turn out to be a pretty good finished product at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Wednesday night’s 81-63 rout of UConn at the Liacouras Center was perhaps an indication that later could be inching closer to sooner for Hamilton. In his third consecutive start, he scored a career-high 13 points on 6 of 7 shooting and added three rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block and did not turn the ball over in a little more than 25 minutes of action.

Hamilton scored the first four points of a game Temple never trailed, dropping in a floater and a midrange jumper. And by the time he went to the bench at the 12:30 mark of the first half to a round of applause, he had already matched his career high of seven points after hitting a fadeaway jumper while getting fouled and then hitting the free throw to complete the 3-point play.

“I saw the chance where I could help my team, and I’m always trying to help my team anywhere I can,” the understated Hamilton said of his quick start.

Hamilton, who said his confidence is at an “all-time high right now,” played in just 11 games and 28 minutes overall as a freshman, hitting just 1 of his 9 shot attempts in what was mostly mop-up time. And through the first 15 games of this season, Hamilton registered double-digit minutes just twice – in the season opener against La Salle and at Saint Joseph’s. During that stretch, there were five games in which Hamilton didn’t play at all, including Temple’s upset win over then-No. 17 Houston back on Jan. 9.

But in the seven games preceding Wednesday night’s rout of UConn, Hamilton saw his playing time spike. Three days later in an overtime win over USF, Hamilton scored six points on 3 of 4 shooting in 18 minutes off the bench, starting a stretch where he averaged a little more than 3.5 points and 13.7 minutes per game.

After a Jan. 27 loss to Cincinnati that saw the Owls blow a 14-point lead and get badly outrebounded by a 46-22 margin, Dunphy said the staff made the collective decision to start Hamilton four days later at No. 13 Houston with the hope of giving Temple more length and athleticism on the glass. The Owls improved in that department and pulled down one less rebound than Houston, but Hamilton got just four points and two boards in a 73-66 to the Cougars, picking up four fouls in 18 minutes of playing time.

“Honestly, it took me by surprise,” Hamilton said of getting the start at Houston, “but I was always ready whenever he called on me. So it looks like the hard work is starting to pay off.”

Hamilton’s second career start in last Saturday’s 75-67 win at Tulane produced what was then a career-high of seven points of 3 of 5 shooting (including 1 of 2 from 3-point range) to go with three rebounds, an assist and two turnovers in a career-high 24 minutes.

Then came Wednesday night, the best game of Hamilton’s young career, in which he and teammate Quinton Rose were a plus-23 on the stat sheet.

“I’ve been saying that he should be playing a lot since the beginning of the season,” senior guard and leading scorer Shizz Alston Jr. said of Hamilton. “Coach knows what he’s doing, and he put him in a couple games ago and it’s paying off for him.”

“He’s really starting to come into his own obviously,” Dunphy said. “A couple of those baseline jumpers he shot tonight, it looked like he thought they were dead in the hoop, that they were going in. So he shot it with great confidence.”

Temple is 17-6 overall and 7-3 in the American Athletic Conference heading into Saturday’s noon game at Tulsa. The Owls are sitting squarely on the NCAA Tournament bubble in Dunphy’s final season on North Broad Street, and there’s still plenty of work ahead for both Hamilton and the team. The Owls are 50th in the NET rankings, and losing to a Tulsa team with a NET of 98 wouldn’t be a good look.

But the trip will still be a tricky one. The Golden Hurricane, after getting off to a 10-3 start, have since lost five of their last seven games and landed on a 13-10 overall record and a 3-7 mark in conference play. Still, they’re a program that has had had Temple’s number, having won seven of the nine games in the series, including last season’s forgettable 76-58 rout of the Owls in which Tulsa got out to a 24-0 lead.

Numbers-wise in the American, Tulsa has largely been a middle-of-the-pack team defensively. And if there’s been one team that’s fared worse than the Owls in rebounding, it’s been the Golden Hurricane, which ranks dead last in the American behind Temple with a minus-4 rebounding margin.

So perhaps Saturday will be a time for the Owls and Hamilton to flex their muscles on the glass against a team that’s had the same struggles. Again, rebounding has been a blind spot for Temple, even as it cruised to a comfortable win Wednesday.

After outrebounding the Huskies 23-10 in the first half, the Owls got crushed on the boards by 31-7 in the second half. Against a better team that wasn’t missing its best player (UConn’s leading scorer Jalen Adams left with an MCL sprain six minutes into the game), it likely would have been costly.

“Well, in the first half, we were just really focused on making sure to box out and keep them off the glass,” Hamilton said. “In the second half, we lost focus a little bit.”

Hamilton, given his versatility and ability to step out and hit a 3-pointer, may ultimately prove to be more of a stretch-four than a typical back-to-the-basket post player who becomes a dominant rebounder, but he’ll still have to be part of a collective team rebounding effort. And if Temple loses focus at Tulsa like it did last year, it’ll be a long day.

Still, Hamilton’s improvement and development is a good sign for a team and a program that needs difference-making players both now and for its future. Most of his 18 offers coming out of Charlotte’s Independence High School came from low- to mid-major college programs, but the potential could be turning into production at just the right time.

“When you went to watch him play, you saw this length, speed, quickness,” Dunphy said. “He’s a good guy. The potential that he had, you could just see it and feel it. And he wasn’t highly recruited, but you could see at some point, he’s going to be pretty good. So I’m hoping that again this is sort of a coming out in these last couple games.”

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