Who: # 9 Villanova (18-2, 7-1 Big East) vs Temple (6-13, 1-7 AAC)
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
Where: Liacouras Center: Philadelphia, PA
TV / Radio: CBS SportsNetwork/ 1210 WPHT
By: RICH FOGEL
Philahoops Staff Writer
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For the first time since January 1st; Temple is coming into a game off of a win. After breaking the program’s longest losing streak since 1975 with a win Wednesday night against Rutgers, the team gained some much needed confidence.
Villanova is having one of their best seasons under Jay Wright’s regime, as the Wildcats are number nine in the Country and have only lost two games all year and will be looking for their third straight road win.
On the other hand, Temple is having the worst year in Fran Dunphy’s eight year run on North Broad. They have only one conference win and with one senior and only eight scholarship athletes they have been under manned and lacked experience all year.
On paper, the game looks like it favors Villanova but as everyone in the Philadelphia area knows, whenever two Big 5 teams matchup you can throw the records right out the window.
“It’s a Big 5 game, everyone in Philadelphia understands how difficult this game is,” Wright said.
With a win over #9 Villanova on Saturday Temple would share the Philadelphia Big 5 title with the Wildcats.
Temple will be looking to continue an extraordinary streak as they have knocked off a top-10 team in each of the last five seasons. In 2009, the top-10 win was at home vs. #3 Villanova (75-65).
Temple and Villanova are meeting for the 88th time, and the first time at the Liacouras Center since 2011. The Owls have won the last two meetings and three of the last four. Villanova is the only Big 5 team that owns a winning record against Temple. The Wildcats have 44 wins all-time with the Owls at 43.
Scouting Temple
Temple is looking for back-to-back wins for just the second time this season as this has been a year full of losing, injuries, and lack of defense.
With five seniors graduated last year and a jump to a more competitive conference, it was likely that Temple’s six straight NCAA tournament appearance streak was going to be snapped. But it would be hard to find someone that thought they would suffer an eight game losing streak and be last in the American Athletic Conference to start February.
The record says 6 and 13 but when you look inside the box score of some of these games, you would realize Temple is not as bad as their record indicates. Eight of the thirteen losses were decided by six points or less and remarkably they have had a halftime lead in 17 of the 19 games this season.
This season is a case of a young team that has not had the experience playing enough with each other to close out games and play team defense for a full 40 minutes. As Jay Wright points out, Temple is getting a lot better as the season is progressing.
“When you talk about this game in Philadelphia, it’s easy for everyone to understand how well Temple’s playing,” Wright said. “They’re just getting better every game, it doesn’t show with wins but they played great against Cincinnati, played great against Rutgers so there really starting to play good basketball,” Wright added.
Dalton Pepper leads the team in scoring (18.0 PPG, 3rd AAC), and Will Cummings is second on the team and fifth in the league with 16.5 PPG, and has scored in double figures in 15 of 17 games played. Quenton DeCosey has stepped up nicely this year, as he averages 15.6 PPG and scored in double figures for the first 18 games of the season before finishing with eight vs. Cincinnati.
With Anthony Lee’s 14.2 PPG, Temple is the only team in Division 1 that has four players averaging 14 or more points.
The defense has been the issue all season though, as the Owls have given up 76.8 points a game.
“I’ve watched Fran [Dunphy] all these years and he’s just building another generation,” Wright said. “They lost five guys [from last season]. It’s just building a new generation, which you have to do sometimes, and I can really see them going in a good direction,” Wright added.
A Look at Villanova
Villanova is a scoring machine this year, averaging 80.5 points a game and have cracked 90 points six times this season. Coming in at an impressive 18 and 2, the Wildcats have only lost to number two ranked Syracuse and a very hot shooting Creighton team who is also in the top 20.
They have won two tough Big East road games in a row, knocking off Marquette in overtime and Georgetown on Monday. They have had been resting all week, while this will be Temple’s third game this week.
“There not ranked as highly as they are for nothing, they haven’t won as many games as they have for nothing, they play together, they have a toughness that they need, they share the basketball, they have good balance, they have good guys coming off the bench and [Jay] does such a good job of coaching,” Dunphy told reporters at practice on Friday.
James Bell and JayVaughn Pinkston are both averaging 15 points a game. Sophomore standout Ryan Arcidiacono is having a good season, averaging 10 points a game and 3.5 assists a contest.
This is the first time Villanova has been ranked in the top 10 since the 2005-06 season.
Prediction
Temple comes out and plays Nova really tough but the Wildcats experience, depth, and ball handling will give Nova a five point victory, 86-81.
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