American Stories – Temple has Plenty of Reasons to Celebrate in WIn Over Shockers

PHILADELPHIA — Temple celebrated one of the three greatest teams in school history last night, introducing members of John Chaney’s 1988 Elite Eight squad that went 32-2 team that was ranked No. 1 in the AP poll behind All-American guard Mark Macon to the crowd at halftime of its game against 16^th ranked Wichita State at the Liacouras Center.

Temple is a program with a rich basketball tradition, and on Thursday night, the Owls gave hints of that when Temple shocked No. 16 Wichita State, 81-79, in overtime when 6-10 senior forward Obi Enechionyia made two game winning free throws with 18 seconds left in overtime and the Owls survived a wild final possession by Wichita State.

It has been a roller coaster of a season for the Owls (12-10, 4-6 American Athletic Conference), who entered this game with a win in the Gildan Charleston Classic, beating Old Dominion and nationally-ranked teams in Auburn and Clemson.

However, they struggled to open American conference play, dropping six of their first nine games.

But Temple, like American rivals Houston, SMU and Tulane, has become more competitive as this league season heats up. “A lot of these games haven’t gone our way and we felt it was time for that to change,’’ junior guard Shizz Alston, Jr. said.

The Owls scrambled back from 10-point second half deficit to tie the game at 74-74 and force overtime when Alston, who only 5 for 22 and was 0-for-6 from the three, scored on a driving layup with seven seconds left in regulation after a steal and a time out. “I had enough confidence for any of the five guys out there to take that shot,” Temple’s veteran coach Fran Dunphy said.

The Owls put five players in double figures. Rose led Temple with 19 points. Senior guard Josh Brown had a season high 15 with 3 threes and three steals; Alston had 12 and Enechionyia and freshman guard Nate Pierre-Louis each added 11. The Owls committed just two turnovers in the last 25 minutes.

The Owls are no strangers to knocking off ranked teams, especially at home. They have defeated at least one Top 25 squad on North Broad Street for 10 straight seasons. The Owls are also 6-5 in games decided by five or less points, and after close losses to La Salle, George Washington, Memphis, Cincinnati and Houston, this was a game that can kick-start a postseason run for the Owls.

“As a coach, you try to tell your players, one game at a time,” Dunphy said. “But a lot of them think they’re visionaries who know what’s going to happen at the end of the season. There was a time when a lot of guys might have held their heads when we fell behind. But we fought through it. Our guys had a lot of fight.”

They needed it. Wichita State led for the first 36 minutes and had a 79-74 lead in overtime before the Owls rallied for their most significant win over the season. “We had a meeting a couple weeks ago,” Brown said. “We always felt we were a much better team that we had shown. Tonight, they had a lot of guys who shoot the lights out. But we blew their cover.”

Wichita State (17-5, 7-3 American), which can go 10 deep and has two franchise players in sophomore point guard Larry Shamet and 6-8, 279-pound Shaquille Morris – a baby Shaq, has designs on going deep into March and the personnel to do it.

Morris was almost unstoppable with 24 points and 9 rebounds. But The American is a difficult league in terms of winning on the road in large part because of the ramped up defense visiting teams face in hostile gyms. Three American teams are ranked in the Top 10 in scoring defense.  Even normally unflappable Wichita State, which is 45-8 on the road since 2014, is experiencing it. The Shockers have lost two road games in this improved, fluid league that has multiple teams looking for at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.

The gap within the conference is not as wide as some may have originally thought.

The Owls won this game with a gritty defense that came to life in the second half after Wichita State threatened to shoot Temple out of the gym when it rushed out to a 48-40 halftime lead. “Our defense in first half was nowhere,” Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. “We gave up 48 points in the first half and they shot 50 percent, although it felt to me like 90.”

The Owls did a much better job in the second half when they limited a normally highly efficient Wichita State offense to just 35.5 percent shooting and only 1-of-10 from beyond the three-point arc and escaped with the win.  The Shockers missed 14 of their last 15 three pointers, including a potential game-winner with five seconds to play in overtime.

“We had our chances,” Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall lamented “We had three good looks at the end of regulation and overtime. This was a game we could have win, should have won.”

Brown, Temple’s best on-ball defensive player and who has his roots playing for Hall of Fame coach Bob Hurley Sr. at now-closed St. Anthony’s of Jersey City, came up particularly big, clamping down defensively on Shamet, an All-American candidate and Wooden semifinalist who is the catalyst for the Shockers’ half-court offense.
Shamet, who leads the conference in assists, finished with just 12 points on 3 of 9 shooting and committed an uncharacteristic six turnovers in 41 minutes. “It didn’t surprise me,” Alston said. “He’s one of the best defensive players in the conference.  He’s been a great defender all his career. Last game, he held (UConn’s high scoring guard) Jalen Adams to just five points just the other night when we played UConn, and tonight he did the same thing to Shamet.’’

This town has gone Eagles crazy with the Super Bowl just two days away and the Temple student section broke into their version of the Eagles’ fight song when the Owls found their way to overtime. But they also found time for a court storming after Temple’s dramatic finish.