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Owls set for conference home opener with Cincinnati

Temple entered its American Athletic Conference schedule with a 6-7 record that included losses in two buy games and a starting center in Jamille Reynolds who will miss six to eight weeks with a broken right thumb.

With a win in the conference opener at East Carolina (9-5, 0-1 AAC) Wednesday and a returning Damian Dunn, Temple is preparing for its first home game of conference play against Cincinnati (10-4, 1-0 AAC) on New Year’s Day at 3 p.m.

After a Dec. 10 loss to Xavier, the Bearcats have won four in a row, including an 88-77 win over Tulane Thursday night in their conference opener. All five Cincinnati starters scored in double figures, led by foward Landers Nolley II's 23 points. Nolley II, who started his career at Virginia Tech and played the previous two seasons at Memphis, is averaging 15.1 points per game and has hit a team-best 35 three-pointers, while guard David DeJulius leads Cincinnati in scoring with 16.4 points per game.

Ahead of the game, head coach Aaron McKie and sophomore shooting guard Shane Dezonie talked to OwlScoop after Saturday morning’s practice. You can read excerpts and listen to the full audio below.

Shane Dezonie

Aaron McKie

McKie on the importance of conference play:

“At this point, there’s a lot of information out there on both teams and we’ve dug a hole for ourselves, but we have a lot of time to get ourselves back out.”

Which areas McKie thinks Temple can improve in:

“Consistency across the board with our defensive effort, offensive focus and sharing the ball, communication. I can go down a laundry list of things that I can say led to us having the record we have, but we’ve got a chance to turn it around and right the ship.”

Dezonie on his comfort in the win at ECU:

“I feel good. I feel like I’m trying to jell with the team a little bit more. I felt like it kind of took me a while to really get comfortable, but I feel like, now, we’re starting to play together and I’m just starting to feel more comfortable in my spot.

How Dezonie and the players are approaching conference play:

“The preseason and the nonconference games, they do affect us. But if we do good in conference play, we know that we can have a shot at the tournament. So we’re just staying locked in on the bigger goal and not worrying about the little stuff that happened before.”

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