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Published Mar 6, 2018
More questions than answers as Owls prepare for conference tournament
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John DiCarlo  •  OwlScoop
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At this point of the season, with Temple sitting at 16-14 overall and 8-10 in conference play, losers of four of its last five games and still playing the same kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde inconsistent basketball it has all season, there were more questions than answers prior to Tuesday’s practice as the Owls prepared for this week’s American Athletic Conference Tournament.

And unless it answers those questions by winning four games in as many days in Orlando as the tournament’s seventh seed, Temple will miss the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in five seasons.

This current group of Owls, a blend of veterans like Josh Brown, Obi Enechionyia, Shizz Alston Jr. and Quinton Rose that has gotten help from a trio of freshmen in Nate Pierre-Louis, J.P. Moorman and De’Vondre Perry, had aspirations of being the team that would get the program back to the Sweet 16 and the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 17 years, since the 2001 squad that advanced the Elite Eight.

But that’s a very lofty goal at best for now.

Instead, Temple just needs a win.

The Owls will play No. 10 seed Tulane, a team with which they split during the regular season, Thursday night at 7 p.m. (ESPNU) in a first-round conference tournament game. If they win, they’ll have to get through No. 2 seed Wichita State in the quarterfinals and likely face No. 3 seed Houston in the semifinals. And if they get that far, top-seed Cincinnati, the nation’s 8th-ranked team, would probably await them in Sunday’s championship game. Wichita State and Houston are 11th and 21st, respectively, in the latest AP Top 25 poll.

In other words, it’s going to be a very tough road for a team that’s been so maddeningly inconsistent. The high highs (wins over Clemson, Auburn and Wichita State) and the low lows (losses to La Salle and George Washington) are all well documented by now.

And after Temple somehow spotted Tulsa a 24-0 lead on the road Sunday in a 76-58 loss that brought the regular season to a disappointing close, the Owls are once again left to answer some of the same questions and hear about some of the same issues that have dogged them since November.

Why have they been so inconsistent?

Why do they continue to settle for jump shots and not make more of an effort to get to the rim?

Why do they continue to talk about not being focused at this juncture of the season?

All of that came up Tuesday when Temple coach Fran Dunphy and players like Enechionyia, Alston, Rose and Pierre-Louis, who was named this week to The American’s All-Rookie team, talked to reporters before practice.

Dunphy, who’s approaching the end of his 12th season at Temple, was asked if the team can look at the conference tournament as a fresh start. It’s a glass-half-full approach, for sure, one any struggling team will look to employ at this time in March.

“I think it’s spring training-ish, is what it is,” Dunphy said. “Everybody’s starting anew and you’ve got a chance to make some noise in the tournament, and everybody in our league feels like they can beat anybody else. That’s a real healthy thing. But for us, playing Tulane, they beat us at our place. We shot it a little bit better when we went down to Tulane (and won back on Feb. 4). We both have had a taste of victory.”

This used to be a clutch time of the year for Temple and Dunphy.

After one transitional 2006-07 season upon taking over for Hall of Fame coach John Chaney, Dunphy led Temple to three consecutive Atlantic 10 championships and a string of six straight NCAA Tournament appearances. The Owls sported an impressive record of 146-57 in those six seasons and a combined 50-11 mark in the months of February and March, all in the A-10. Temple twice closed out the regular season, in 2009-10 and 2012-13, with seven-game win streaks.

In the five seasons that have followed since moving to The American, Temple has been a more pedestrian 27-20 in the months of February and March. The last time the Owls closed out the regular season with authority was during the 2015-16 campaign, when they went 8-2 in their final 10 games. Not so coincidentally, it was the last time Temple advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The Owls lost to Iowa in the first round, 72-70, in Brooklyn.

Over the last two seasons, Temple is just 9-8 in February and March.

What has changed?

“I think the teams that we’ve played has changed,” Dunphy said. “For example, Tulsa’s really a good basketball team, so that was the last game that we played. I thought we played OK at Connecticut, but we didn’t come up with a victory. So those two teams on the road late in the season are tough games for us to play. Now everybody’s in a neutral-site situation, so hopefully it’s going to mean we’re not worried about anything on the road; we’re all on the road at this point.

“So I just hope we can make shots. And for us, that’s a huge key. Shooting good shots leads to us making shots, and that’s how we have to set it up.”

The 72-66 loss last Wednesday at UConn Dunphy referenced was to a Huskies team that has its own issues at 14-17 and enters the conference tournament as the eighth seed, one step behind Temple.

And as for making shots, that’s the thing, and it’s not a good one. Temple hasn’t made enough of them or made them consistently enough, and the Owls haven’t been able to fuel their tank off much of anything else.

The Owls are ninth in the conference in field-goal-percentage defense at 43.8 percent and dead last in the league in rebounding margin at minus-3.7, so they haven’t been able to generate much energy or momentum-changing plays in those areas.

And offensively, the numbers aren’t much better, nor has there been any sort of clear identity at that end of the floor.

Temple is eighth in the conference in scoring offense at 69.6 points per game, 10th in shooting at 42.2 percent, eighth in 3-point shooting at 34.5 percent and ninth in assists per game at 12.7.

“To be honest with you, I think we needed to take it to the rim a little bit once we weren’t making our jumpers right away,” Dunphy said. “Let’s take it to the rim and see if we can’t get to the foul line and get some points a little bit easier. We just needed to break through.”

Dunphy was referring to the unsightly stretch in which Temple watched Tulsa score the game’s first 24 points Sunday, but his response to a question Tuesday could have applied to so many other games this season in which the Owls have been content to chuck jump shots from beyond the arc or not far from it instead of driving to the rim. Although it’s been just the eighth-best team in the league in 3-point shooting, Temple has nonetheless attempted the second-most 3-point attempts in the league this season with 711. Only Wichita State (717) has shot more.

And as a result, Temple isn’t getting to the rim very much at all. To be more precise, the Owls have been remarkably bad at getting to the free-throw line. They’re 342nd out of 351 Division I teams in free-throw attempts with 445, and they’ve hit just 68 percent of those tries. Virginia is the only team of note that has gotten there less often, 350th out of 351 teams, but the Cavaliers can get away with it because they’re 28-2 and far and away the nation’s best defensive team and ranked No. 1 in the country.

In Alston, Temple has one of the better free-throw shooters in the country. He’s not among the national leaders statistically because he hasn’t hit the NCAA’s threshold of 2.5 made per game, but he’s missed just three times all season and converted 48 of his 51 attempts.

To be fair, the 6-foot-4 Alston’s game is that of a jump-shooting combo guard and not of a smaller, quicker, drive-and-dish point guard. He leads the team with 63 made 3-pointers and has hit 39.1 percent of them.

But it couldn’t hurt to have him and his teammates initiate better offense by driving to the rim, right?

“That’s not who we are, typically,” Dunphy began. “We’re asking a guy like Shizz to get to the line. Here’s a kid who’s as fine a foul shooter as there is in the country. We just need him to get there more. Come to a jump stop, lean in, show a shot fake and create the contact instead of avoiding the contact, and that will help us a little bit.”

And how does Alston feel about that? When the threes and jumpers aren’t falling, why does it take Temple so long to snap out of it and realize it may be better to start driving to the basket?

“I think it’s the way our team is made up,” Alston responded. “We’ve got a lot of guys that can shoot the ball, but I think we settle for threes too much. We need an inside presence, so I think we can start going to Ernest (Aflakpui) more and having Obi post. Teams post against us a lot, and we need to start doing that also.”

That’s fine in theory, but the 6-10 Aflakpui hasn’t been getting too many opportunities, and he’s still a work in progress offensively playing with his back to the basket and hasn’t shown the ability to step out and shoot.

Statistically, his numbers look OK. He’s 58 of 94 shooting for a 61.7 field goal percentage mark. He did shoot 3 of 3 and score six points in 17 minutes in a recent win over UCF, but his minutes were limited, in part, due to four fouls. And over the last two games, he’s played just 25 minutes, scored just two points and shot 1 of 5.

And it’s fair to say Temple probably would not be capable of being an effective inside-out team in relying just upon Aflakpui alone even if it wanted to.

Enechionyia, who’s been as mercurial as anyone on Temple’s roster, might have the prettiest shooting stroke on the team, but he could also help himself and the team out by posting up more and is more equipped to do it than Aflakpui.

He’s capable of driving to the rim, too.

“We know we could have been a lot more successful this season had we focused on getting to the basket and getting a lot of easier buckets,” Enechionyia said. “That’s something we need to do in the tournament to be successful.”

But why has that not happened?

Again, the question was posed, this time to Enechionyia:

Why has the team not snapped out of its love of falling for the jump shot and trying instead to get to the rim more?

“I think a lot of it is just kind of the way we play as individual players,” Enechionyia said. “Sometimes when we’re hitting shots in practice and things are going well, we try to transfer that to the game. And when the shots aren’t falling, we fall into these lapses where we can’t score for a few minutes – and it ruins the game for us, really.”

It appears to have had the same effect on the season, and it's a stark assessment of the team from one of its senior captains.

And so Owls, although they’ve certainly painted themselves into the tightest of corners, have one last chance to get it right.

Along those lines, Alston was asked this question:

Is it too late in the season to change your style and go to the basket more?

“I don’t think so,” Alston said. “When we get out in transition, we’re a pretty dangerous team. So with us, any given night, we could go out, hit some shots and get in transition. So I don’t think it’s too late. I think we can turn it around.”

Alston, of course, is every bit entitled to feel optimistic as a player. But it’s the “any given night” part that’s unsettling at this point of the season. It doesn’t speak to consistency. It doesn’t speak to a rhythm. It’s probably not going to carry a team to four wins in four nights.

Yes, Temple did rattle off five straight wins not long ago, starting with an 85-57 rout of UConn at the Liacouras Center back on Jan. 28. For a period of 19 days, the Owls looked to have discovered consistency, the mark of the team and program they used to be at this time of the year.

Then the Owls looked nothing of the sort when they lost to the Huskies on the road last week. They beat a nationally-ranked Wichita State team by two in overtime at home during that five-game win streak but lost a 14-point halftime lead to that same team on the road.

And when they needed one more resume-boosting win at home against Houston Feb. 18, the Owls let the Cougars score the game’s first 15 points, got outrebounded by the largest margin in the 21-year history of the Liacouras Center and lost, 80-59.

And then there was Sunday. Twenty-four points. Needing a win in the regular-season finale to get back on track, Temple allowed Tulsa to score the first 24 points of the game.

How does that happen?

“It’s all about our approach and our focus going into the game,” said Rose, Temple’s leading scorer. “I feel like the Tulsa game, we weren’t focused before, as opposed to Auburn and Clemson and Wichita State. We were just locked in, came out strong and threw the first punch.”

And then came the next question:

Why do you think the focus goes in and out like that?

“Honestly,” Rose said, “I’m not sure.”

Putbacks

Nate Pierre-Louis, who averaged 8.1 points and 3.0 rebounds in 24 regular-season games, was named to the American Athletic Conference All-Rookie team this week. The freshman out of North Jersey’s Roselle Catholic quickly became a fan favorite for his high-energy approach to the game and was a big part of the Owls’ win over Wichita State last month, scoring 11 points in 31 minutes off the bench.

Like several of his teammates, Pierre-Louis was asked how the Owls can hope to string together a stretch of consistent performances this week in an attempt to win the conference tournament and advance to the NCAA Tournament.

His response was simple.

“Our backs are against the wall,” he said. “Win or go home. We have no choice.”

Sophomore center Damion Moore, who missed seven games recently with a sprained ankle before returning for the final seven games of the regular season, said Tuesday that he feels able and ready to play.

“I’m sure I’m already to 100 percent at this point,” the 6-10 Mississippi native said. “It’s just little aches and bruises and stuff. I’ve played through it at this point, so I’m good.”

Moore’s best game of the season came in Temple’s win over South Carolina at Madison Square Garden back on Nov. 30, when he posted a double-double of 20 points and 10 rebounds. In the Owls’ 75-56 win over UCF Feb. 25, Moore came off the bench and scored nine points on 4 of 5 shooting in 17 minutes.

Since then, he played just four minutes and shot 1 of 4 from the floor in the loss at UConn and saw two minutes in the closing moments of the loss this past Sunday at Tulsa. He said he’s ready and willing to help Temple establish a much-needed inside presence if he can get the minutes this week in Orlando.

“I try to get in the game and give my best effort every time I go in,” Moore said, “no matter the minutes or how much I play or anything. I just want to play hard and make my mark while I’m on the court. It’s definitely a big piece that I think I can (offer), be a presence and just post a lot.”

Has he been told by Fran Dunphy and the coaching staff to be ready to play more this week?

“No, he hasn’t talked about it,” Moore said, “but that’s how I take it. I’m going to always stay ready, no matter if I play or not. I’m sure that I’ll play more in the tournament. I’m just going to stay ready.”


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