Coming out of halftime against Buffalo with a 10-point advantage, Temple was in position to build on its lead and do what it should do – cruise to a win over a Bulls team that had not beaten a Division-I program in more than a month.
The Owls’ lead ballooned to 14 before the Bulls cut it to eight. As the game crept inside the nine-minute mark, Temple still hadn’t put the game away and needed a knockout punch.
The Owls got it from someone head coach Adam Fisher was glad to see stick around during the offseason.
Although he’s gone back to coming off the bench with Lynn Greer III moving into the starting lineup, point guard Quante Berry led the way in Temple’s backcourt when it mattered Sunday afternoon. He ripped the ball from Buffalo guard Noah Batchelor and promptly threw down a thunderous dunk, then followed it up with a three-pointer less than a minute later to switch momentum back to the Owls in what eventually became a 91-71 win at the Liacouras Center.
Berry’s own personal five-point run pushed Temple’s lead back out to 13 points with 7:29 to go, and Buffalo never cut the deficit inside single digits the rest of the way.
In 26 minutes off the bench, Berry scored 15 points on 7 of 8 shooting to go with three rebounds, three assists and a game-high four steals, and 13 of his 15 points came in the second half.
After transferring in from Providence and averaging just a little more than 10 minutes per game last year in his first season at Temple, the 6-foot-4 redshirt sophomore has played almost 27 minutes per game and averaged 8.5 points per contest for an Owls team that improved to 8-5 entering the month of January and American Athletic Conference play.
“How many guys are staying now?” Fisher said during his postgame press conference. “If you do a stat, I'd love to see a project on guys that stay in a program with all this transfer portal and people moving around. [Berry] stayed. He continued to know our system, so now you're not learning concepts. You're just working on your game. He did an amazing job. Great credit to him all summer, all fall, working on his game.”
With the additions of Greer, Jamal Mashburn Jr. and Jameel Brown via the transfer portal and Aiden Tobiason as an incoming freshman, Berry’s minutes might have otherwise gone down. But when Greer was suspended for the season’s first nine games due to NCAA infractions, Berry started at the point and has continued to play meaningful minutes.
Freshly off a 51-point thumping to Georgia 10 days prior, Buffalo looked like a different team Sunday to start the game. Led by guard Anquan Boldin Jr., the Bulls held a 21-16 lead with 11 minutes left before halftime. Temple was settling for shots and missing far more than they were making, and leading scorers Mashburn and forward Steve Settle III were virtually ineffective at the outset of the game. The Owls were searching for an offensive spark to cut into the lead, and they got it from guard Shane Dezonie.
Like Berry, Dezonie decided to stay at Temple instead of entering the transfer portal and has made an impact, especially over the last three games. On Sunday, his seven first-half points helped Temple establish an offensive rhythm. He finished with 11 points after scoring a season-high 17 in last Saturday’s loss to Rhode Island and eight three days before in a home win over Davidson.
Dezonie battled a wrist injury over the summer that has lingered a bit into this season, and Fisher now sees his senior guard starting to catch up from the time he missed in the late summer and fall.
“Shane missed the first 25 practices of the season,” Fisher said. “So now you're in preseason, you get ready for the first game, and he comes back for the last three practices, so it's going to take some time. I think we have a lot of guys. I think our minutes were balanced, shot attempts were balanced, and I think that's what we preach.”
After a slow start, Temple held Buffalo scoreless for the final five minutes of the first half and went on a 9-0 run to seize control of the game going into halftime.
And after his own personal slow start, Mashburn, the Owls’ leading scorer, opened up the second half on a tear and scored eight of Temple’s first 10 second-half points. He finished with 18 points, 13 of which came in the second half.
Mashburn, a New Mexico transfer, scored 20 or more points in eight of Temple’s first nine games this season but has been held under 20 during the last four games. In addition to Berry’s 15 points, the Owls got 15 from Zion Stanford, 13 from Settle and Dezonie’s 11.
“They were switching up different defenses. They started off in man, then they went to zone, and they pressed and they switched one through five,” Mashburn said. “So they were doing a lot of different stuff to try to off put our rhythm. I was just taking what the defense was giving me, and continued to be aggressive.”
With teams continuing to devote more defensive resources to Mashburn, Greer continuing to find his footing and Brown still out due to personal reasons, Berry’s continued growth has been a positive through Temple’s first 13 games.
Now the Owls will turn their attention to Friday’s conference opener against a Wichita State team that will bring a 10-3 record to the Liacouras Center.
“We're proud of these guys,” Fisher said. “I'm proud that we went 5-0 in nonconference at home. That’s important. There are teams in our league that played nine home games, and we played five.”
Watch Sunday's postgame press conference sessions here.
