CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – It’s been five years since Temple started a season with four straight wins.
The Owls came close to pulling it off Friday night at Boston College in their first true road game of the season, but a second-half scoring drought and the play of Eagles forward Elijah Strong were too much to overcome in a 72-69 loss at Conte Forum.
Temple (3-1) got 23 points and four assists from guard Jamal Mashburn Jr. and 15 points and eight rebounds from forward Steve Settle III, but Strong’s game-high 25 points and 13 rebounds helped the Eagles (2-1) outlast an Owls team that had erased a 14-point deficit.
Strong tipped in a miss to put the Eagles up 70-66 with 21 seconds left in the second half. Mashburn then banked in a three-pointer in transition to give the Owls a shot to complete the comeback and start the young season off 4-0.
Elijah Gray, who scored 10 points on 4 of 7 shooting in his first game of the season after missing the Owls’ first three games in concussion protocol, had a chance to tie the game with 10 seconds remaining. He posted up on the right block and began backing his defender down, but committed an offensive foul to give the Eagles the ball back.
“He thought he had a mismatch, so he thought he could go and try to make a play,” Temple head coach Adam Fisher said. “It just didn't go our way.”
Boston College guard Chas Kelley III split a pair of free throws to extend BC’s lead to three after Gray’s turnover. Mashburn’s final three didn’t draw iron, and the Owls fell to the Eagles in their first loss of the season.
“I think once he got over half court, he expected them not to [foul],” Fisher said of Mashburn. “So, he's made big shots. He's a great player. Trust him with anything at the end of the game.”
The Mashburn three off the glass with 20 seconds left to play that made it a 70-69 game was Temple’s first field goal since the 8:42 mark of the second half, when a Gray layup gave the Owls a 61-57 lead. After that basket, Boston College closed out the game on a 15-8 run as Temple hit just 1 of its last 12 shots.
Temple couldn’t contain Strong, Boston College’s 6-foot-8 sophomore forward who scored 15 points in the first half on 7 of 10 shooting, including a perfect 4-for-4 start. He was the catalyst for a red-hot BC offense that started off making four of its five three-point attempts.
The Eagles extended their lead to 24-17 off of a second-chance jumper by graduate guard Roger McFarlane (6 points, 6 rebounds), and kept their distance until Zion Stanford’s two brought Temple within 30-24 at the 9:34 mark of the first half. From then on, the Eagles went on a roll to jump out to a 41-27 lead with five minutes remaining in the period. Temple closed out the half strong, however, getting within five at halftime, 46-41, with the help of a Mashburn jumper.
The Owls’ first half momentum continued out of the break, as they went on a 9-0 run to take a 55-50 lead with 13:24 remaining. A corner three by BC’s Donald Hand Jr. brought the Eagles within two with 12:58 to go, and then the Eagles tied the game at 55 with free throws from Jayden Hastings and McFarlane. A three-pointer from Gray put the Owls up 59-57 at the 9:21 mark, and a subsequent layup notched Gray’s 10th point of the game and a 61-57 lead for Temple.
The Owls’ shooting drought ensured from there, and the Eagles responded with a steal and slam by Hand and three-point play from Strong, giving them a 64-63 lead with five minutes to left.
Both teams entered a scoring drought until free throws by Hand brought the Eagles up 66-63 with 2:56 left. Temple freshman forward Babatunde Durodola (7 points, 7 rebounds) drained a pair of free throws to get Temple back within one with 2:13 left. Strong scored off of a goaltending call by Settle that was reviewed, bringing BC back up 68-65 with under two minutes to play. Durodola split another pair of free throws with 1:36 remaining, keeping Temple’s hopes of going undefeated alive.
After Mashburn’s three, Strong and Kelley split their free throws to put BC up by three, leading to the Owls' final possession that came up short.
Despite the outcome, Fisher gave credit to the Eagles and had positive takeaways for Temple’s “first true road game” of the season against an ACC team.
“We have great respect for this program, their history, and I think they came out and had a great first half. We had to do a better job,” Fisher said. “Giving up 46 points in the first half is uncharacteristic of us, but I was proud of our guys. I thought we fought and we stuck together. We just didn't have enough there at the end to finish it off.”
Despite fouling out in his season debut on that late offensive foul, Fisher continued to trust Gray late in the game, with the sophomore being productive in his 19 minutes of action.
“He's an experienced guy,” Fisher said of the 6-8 Fordham transfer. “I think he understands. He's been really locked in on what we do. He had [a] really good preseason in a lot of good things. I think he just stayed focused.”
Fisher said that offensive rebounds were a point of emphasis heading into Friday’s matchup, as was physicality, which led to their strong start in the second half. Despite a 3-0 start, Temple had allowed 15 offensive rebounds to Sacred Heart and Monmouth and 17 offensive boards in Tuesday’s win over Drexel.
Boston College swiped 13 offensive boards, but Temple narrowly won the rebounding battle, 38-37.
“We just gotta get off with some better starts and do a better job of being physical,” he said. “I thought they were really physical. We watched them on film. They send several guys to the glass.”
“Offensive rebounds were our number one concern over there,” he continued. “I know they had a bunch early, but we had to match that physicality. I thought we did it in the second half, and I think we responded to it, but we have to learn that you gotta come out with that physicality, that intensity right from the start.”
Boston College head coach Earl Grant was proud of his team’s collective effort to stop Mashburn, Temple’s significant transfer portal addition from New Mexico, in the final minutes.
“I mean, he's got about 2,000 points on his career,” Grant said. “And, we knew he was gonna be a challenge. He's averaging 25 coming in after three games, so we just wanted to keep him on his average, make things hard for him. We knew multiple guys would even defend him, but he was really talented, and I'm just glad we were able to slow him down a little bit at the last eight minutes. But we really hunkered in and got stops, possession after possession.”
After Mashburn made a layup with 14:27 remaining, he did not convert another field goal until that late three-pointer, part of several scoring droughts that affected the Owls in the second half. Although Mashburn still wound up with 23 points, he shot 8 of 19 to get there and also committed half of Temple’s 10 turnovers.
Fisher cited those droughts as an area of improvement heading into next weekend, when the Owls take on Florida State Friday night and then UMass the next night up in Connecticut at the Hall of Fame Tip–Off.
“I'll go back and watch the film, but I thought we could get some good opportunities to attack, try to get to the basket,” Fisher said. “Felt we had a couple open threes that we liked. So, we'll go back and watch the film, see where they were, and we'll learn from this and get ready for next week.”
