Zion Stanford looked crafty and confident in carrying Temple with 19 first-half points Tuesday night in its first Big 5 game of the season against Drexel.
His lone assist, however, was just as important.
With the pesky and persistent Dragons hanging around late in the second against an Owls team that was playing with just nine scholarship players, Stanford found freshman forward Babatunde Durodola with a pass in the paint for a layup that pushed Temple’s lead back out to eight and helped stave off a late Drexel rally in a 69-61 win over the Dragons that lifted the Owls to a 3-0 record and a victory that put them one step closer to competing for another Big 5 Classic championship.
That connection from Stanford to Durodola gave way to Temple's lone field goal in the game's final five minutes.
Stanford, who starred at West Catholic High School and was recruited by Drexel before signing with Temple, was nearly perfect in the first half, shooting 7 of 8 from the floor while the Dragons were successfully making life tough for Jamal Mashburn Jr., the Owls’ leading scorer. Mashburn shot just 2 of 9 in the first half while Stanford was comfortably scoring at all three levels on the floor.
Stanford’s second-half assist to Durodola came with about three-and-a-half minutes remaining and less than a minute after he had turned the ball over. Temple had grabbed a 12-point lead almost five minutes into the second half, but big shots from guard Kobe MaGee (17 points), forward Cole Hargrove (15 points) and guard Yame Butler (13 points) kept the Dragons (2-1) within striking distance.
Butler made it a two-possession game at 63-57 with 4:24 remaining, and Stanford was whistled for traveling five seconds later. After Hargrove missed at the other end and Quante Berry corralled the rebound, the ball came to Stanford, and he settled the possession and assisted on Durodola’s layup.
The Dragons did eventually cut the Owls’ lead to four at 65-61 with 1:30 remaining before Mashburn iced the game with four free throws, so every point and every decision mattered down the stretch for Temple.
“Every time I'm on the court, I pretty much want to be a playmaker, make plays for my teammates,” said Stanford, whose 23 points Tuesday night were a career high. “I might not be able to get a bucket every time, so if I see one of my teammates open, I’ll look to play-make first. So during that play, I would say we focus on getting the ball in the middle in the zone. So basically, when I get the ball in the middle in the zone, I gotta make plays. So I saw they were heavy, loaded to (defending) the corner, and I saw Baba open, so dished it to him.”
After Temple jumped out to an 11-point second-half lead behind dunks from freshman forward Dillon Battie and Berry, Drexel head coach Zach Spiker called a timeout with 11:32 left to play, and the Dragons came out of the break in a zone that held Temple scoreless for nearly four minutes and helped slice nearly eight points off the Owls’ lead.
“I think we played four possessions of zone tonight,” said Spiker, although it looked like Drexel stayed in that zone much longer. “Had I known that they weren't going to score on any of them, I should have started the game in it, right?”
All kidding aside, Drexel stayed close by outrebounding Temple by 43-38, swiping 17 offensive rebounds and scoring 18 second-chance points. In addition to playing without point guard Lynn Greer III, who has six games remaining on his nine-game suspension due to an NCAA rules violation, the Owls were again without forward Elijah Gray. Temple head coach Adam Fisher said he hopes to have the Fordham transfer when the Owls play at Boston College Friday.
Temple was also missing reserve guard Shane Dezonie and backup big man Mohammed Keita Tuesday night. Fisher said the 7-foot-1 Keita hurt a finger in practice Monday and that Dezonie was dealing with a foot injury. Dezonie, he said, tried to make a go of it before Tuesday’s game but couldn’t play. Fisher said he would have to meet with the team’s doctor before knowing both players’ statuses for Friday.
Mashburn missed seven first-half shots and finished just 5 of 16 from the floor, but he went 9-for-10 from the free-throw line to come away with 20 points and a team-high four assists. He went 6-for-6 from the line inside the game’s final five minutes and knocked down four of those foul shots to close out the scoring. Durodola, a freshman who reclassified from the 2025 class to the 2024 class to sign with Temple in mid-August, started his third consecutive game and contributed seven points and a team-best nine rebounds, with Berry adding eight boards.
If Temple can win at La Salle’s newly-renovated TruMark Financial Center on Nov. 30, it will play in its second straight Big 5 Classic championship game Dec. 7 against the winner of the other pod that includes Penn, Villanova and St. Joe’s. The Hawks, the team that turned aside the Owls in last year’s Big 5 title game at the Wells Fargo Center, beat the Wildcats Tuesday night.
Temple still has three games to worry about before that next Big 5 game at La Salle, so Fisher said his program won’t be looking beyond Friday’s game up in Chestnut Hill.
“I know it sounds so coach talk, but for us, we made a commitment before the year (that) we're going to focus on each day,” Fisher said when asked about what it would mean to compete for another Big 5 title. “And I tell them, these 31 opportunities you get to play are the most fun. You get two hours tonight where nothing else matters. You just get to go hoop with your friends. It doesn't get any better than that. The hard days are all the 6 a.m. lifts, going to class all day, then going to study hall, handling your academics and practice. Those are hard. This should be fun and a little bit easier on them. So I’ll give you the coach talk answer. I'm sorry, but that is our focus. It's tomorrow.”
Watch Tuesday night's postgame press conferences here.
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