Temple coming off long layoff to host Cincinnati
Temple enters Tuesday night’s home game against Cincinnati riding a three-game win streak. The Owls last played back on Jan. 12 at Tulsa, the program’s first time winning in Golden Hurricane territory.
According to freshman point guard Jeremiah Williams, a change of attitudes in practice has led to Temple’s recent success.
“Winning solves a lot of problems,” Williams said Monday in a Zoom call with reporters. “Our practice habits have changed with guys paying more attention to detail.”
Since Nick Jourdain’s career-high 23-point performance on his mother’s birthday, the Owls have had games against Wichita State and USF being postponed due to COVID-related issues with those programs. Now the Owls are hoping what will be a 15-day layover comes to an end against a Cincinnati team that Temple hasn’t beaten since 2016, with the Bearcats having won the last nine games in the series.
“It’s something we have no control over,” head coach Aaron McKie said of the long layoff. “We have to position ourselves to be ready to pivot at all times.”
Temple has spent the last two weeks practicing and playing intrasquad scrimmages. Seeing the same faces and hearing the same voices gets tiresome, and McKie said his team is “at that point.”
McKie said he and the staff reached out to SMU in an attempt to move up their Jan. 27 matchup, but the programs’ respective schedules didn’t match up to each other’s liking.
The two weeks off have been beneficial for the health of the Owls, with McKie saying that guard Tai Strickland (back) and center Emmanuel Okpomo (neck) are now “available and ready to go.”
Wes Miller’s 10-man Cincinnati rotation is highlighted by guard play, headed by upperclassmen Jeremiah Davenport and David DeJulius, and length on the interior that features the 6-foot, 9-inch Ody Oguama, 6-11 Abdul Ado and 7-1 Hayden Koval.
Both McKie and Williams are emphasizing limiting the production of Davenport and DeJulius, with Williams saying Temple’s game plan is to “get them off the three-point line and make them play a halfcourt set where we can control the game with our defense.”
Williams added, “If [DeJulius] gets going, the basket can get a lot bigger for him.”
Williams had been Temple’s go-to defender against opponents’ best ball-handlers and/or scorers, but with the emergence of freshman small forward Jahlil White, he has been sharing that duty along with his primary ball-handling responsibilities on the offensive end.
Williams has led the Owls in total minutes played and minutes per game during his two-year stretch on North Broad Street.
“Sometimes I get tired but this is what I’ve wanted,” Williams said. “I’m always going to play my hardest, tire myself out, and I enjoy guarding the best player.”
McKie also wants to limit second-chance points for the Bearcats. Though their bigs don’t get many post touches, McKie noted that most of their production comes from crashing the offensive boards.
Cincinnati averages 38.4 rebounds per game to Temple’s 37.7, making it a somewhat even matchup down low.