Temple’s newly constructed roster has had just two chances to take the floor since the college basketball season tipped off over a month ago, due to the team’s COVID-19 protocol.

An opening night win over NJIT and a conference schedule debut loss to Houston have shown what this team is capable of in a free-flowing, spacious and cautiously aggressive offense.

Redshirt freshman guard Damian Dunn is leading the way for the Owls in the scoring column averaging 12.5 points per game. Senior forward J.P. Moorman II is a close second with 11.0 points per game. Moorman and grad transfer Brendan Barry have found the most success from 3-point land shooting 5-for-8 and 4-for-8, respectively.

Temple has seen its most success by sharing the ball. When the offense becomes stagnant accompanied by poor decision making, that production begins to unravel. To an extent, that can be expected with such an inexperienced team but they cannot afford to snowball wasted possessions in conference play.

Much of second-year head coach Aaron McKie’s half-court sets are simple set-ups to get his team moving offensively and creating for one another. Running quick hitters and setting off-ball screens have helped them open up the floor, which is why Temple jumped on NJIT early. Playing at No. 6-ranked Houston was a bit tougher of a challenge, exposing the fact that the Owls can’t rely on the scoring capabilities of one guy.

They’ll face a similar barrier on Wednesday at 2 p.m. against an SMU team without a blemish on its record five games into its season.