A resurgent Temple team meeting a St. Joe’s squad coming off a big win over Dayton brought a full house to the Liacouras Center on Saturday afternoon.
Only the Owls’ fans went home happy after a dominating 78-60 victory which marked Temple’s fourth straight win. The Owls shot 60 percent from the field in improving to 15-5 overall and 4-2 in the Atlantic 10 in front of 10,302 – the second largest crowd in the arena’s history.
Ramone Moore scored 21 points and Juan Fernandez added 17 and the pair – along with center Micheal Eric, who finished with 11 – scored all of Temple’s first-half points as it ran out to a 38-24 lead and never looked back. St. Joe’s fell to 13-9, 3-4.
“I’ll be anxious to watch the film, but Fernandez and Moore knocked it out,” said Temple coach Fran Dunphy. “You get those guys, along with Khalif Wyatt, in a rhythm and they start making shots, it feeds everybody else.
“Our defense on the perimeter was good, we talked well, we were aggressive, switched a little, denied well. We didn’t battle as hard as we needed underneath, they had 15 offensive rebounds, but overall I was very pleased.”
Despite not scoring in the first half, Wyatt finished with 10 points and also dished out eight assists. Nine players ended up in the scoring column, including deep reserves Jake Godino and Nick Pendergast.
Eric played 17 minutes in his third game back from a patella injury, and the Owls have played two of their better games of the season this week with him providing more of a presence.
“Having Mike back and being pretty effective shooting the ball has been key,” said Moore. “We just have to be consistent. We’re gaining confidence each game and trying to win each game and Mike is gaining confidence in himself. The past two games, it’s been great to see Mike, we wanted to feed him the ball. That was part of our plan.”
Moore said he didn’t know he, Fernandez and Eric were the only Temple scorers in the first half.
“In the beginning of the game, Juan came out firing and we were getting him the ball,” said Moore. “I came out firing as well and credit to Mike for stepping up as well, but it wasn’t planned that way.”
Fernandez scored the Owls’ first seven points and added five more in a 17-2 run that put them ahead 24-10.
“It’s always important to get a lead,” said Fernandez. “It happened at Charlotte the other day, we started the game on a 17-1 run and this was sort of similar. It’s something we have to learn to take advantage of, see who’s shooting the ball well.”
Ron Roberts had 17 points and 10 rebounds for the Hawks, but the Owls held high-scoring guards Langston Galloway and Carl Jones to a combined 12 points.
“We have big guards who take up a lot of space on defense and guys that are smart enough to get steals and are doing a good job,” said Fernandez. “Then we have Anthony Lee and Mike backing us up. We can still get better, but our defense is as good as it has been in a while.”
The Owls won their 10th straight matchup with their city rivals and will see them again at Hagan Arena next month. No current Temple player has ever lost to the Hawks.
“You always want to keep it that way, but you know they know what the streak has been and you expect them to take pride in reversing that,” said Fernandez. “We have to go to their place and it will be tough.”
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