AAC Tournament Quarterfinals: Temple

Friday, March 10th, 2023
3:00 PM
ESPN2
Dickies Arena

The Bearcats (19-11 [11-7 AAC], NET #76, KenPom #63) travel to Fort Worth to take on Temple (16-15, [10-8 AAC], NET #118, KenPom #111) in the #4 vs #5 game of their final AAC tournament before moving onto the Big 12 next season.

Since Temple's 88-83 OT loss to UC on February 22nd, the Owls defeated UCF at home (57-55) on a game-winning lay-up at the buzzer and lost at Tulane (83-82) after their game-winning lay-up attempt was blocked in the final seconds of the game.

Temple played both games without 4th-year guard Khalif Battle who has not been with the team since their February 16th game against Wichita St.

A loss on Friday could possibly mark an end to the Bearcats' 22/23 season with a NIT at-large bid far from guaranteed.

The winner of this match-up will play Saturday at 3 pm against the winner of #1 Houston vs #8 USF/#9 ECU.

Khalif Battle is no longer on the team. Big blow for them. I'm not aware of the situation, so I don't know if there was a bigger issue or if this kid just got a bug up his butt.

For the sake of the older kids—and Wes honestly—I hope they go much further.

But this team has been so inconsistent, I'm okay if this just fades and we hope for better players moving forward. I'll sure be glad to leave the AAC, and hope that's never the excuse for not being able to recruit again.

Temple has been a tough matchup for us. Their big guards give us problems. Maybe the tournament environment will shake things up.

-5.5

Seems a little high given the recent history between the two teams but with how erratic Temple has been this season, I certainly get why we're the favorites.

-5.5 does seem high. Torvik has the Bearcats winning 73-69, and they have us ranked higher than others like Kenpom and EvanMiya.

19-5 run here

Great defense in that half. I like that we brought a double to Dunn on the final possession.

Defensive masterclass since the 13-minute mark of the 1st half. Need to stay focused on getting good shots on offense. Would hate to get complacent and let Temple back into the game after a few bad possessions.

sedziobs said:

-5.5 does seem high. Torvik has the Bearcats winning 73-69, and they have us ranked higher than others like Kenpom and EvanMiya.

Click to expand...

I hope nobody took the points based on this horrible take.

Queens_NYC said:

Defensive masterclass since the 13-minute mark of the 1st half. Need to stay focused on getting good shots on offense. Would hate to get complacent and let Temple back into the game after a few bad possessions.

Click to expand...

I'd say we played good defense in the opening minutes too, Temple just hit some tough threes. We've been lights out from three, but I am most impressed with the defense. Everyone is active.

Game ball to Skillings. He ignited our first half run and played at a very high level until the final buzzer.

Bring on Houston!

Queens_NYC said:

Game ball to Skillings. He ignited our first half run and played at a very high level until the final buzzer.

Bring on Houston!

Click to expand...

Yeah, this game seemed like a preview of next year's team with DDJ being relatively quiet and Skillings playing a big role. Reason for optimism.

We only allowed 0.77 points per possession, our second best defensive performance of the season just above the 0.76 we allowed against LaSalle. Our offense was actually a bit worse than the last matchup against Temple. They only got to the rim 15 times and converted just 40% of those. We blocked 11 shots, including 7 by Lakhin (who also had 3 steals). Rebounding, free throw shooting, and midrange were about equal for both teams. The main difference was our defense at the rim and the three point line, plus winning the turnover battle by 8. Temple started the game 4-5 from three, but then went just 2-19 the rest of the game.

Great defensive effort and hopefully a sign of things to come.

MAW was really lighting it up on offense. He had 20 points on 5-7 from three to go with 5 assists and zero turnovers. Skillings put up 20 in only 20 minutes by going 6-7 at the rim. Nolley scored 22 but needed 19 shots to do it so not all that efficient. Nobody else scored more than 6. Ody pulled down 12 rebounds.

Random side note - EvanMiya tracks a stat called "kill shots", which are 10-0 runs. Seems really arbitrary to me. We had a 9-0 run and two 8-0 runs in this game, but no 10-0 runs. We had larger runs of 19-4, 22-6, and 26-7. Temple did however have a 10-0 run early in the game. Is it meaningful that we lost the "kill shots" battle in a 30 point win? Just seems like a weird thing to track and list on the main rankings page.