Stifling Defense, Balanced Scoring Leads Men's Basketball to Third Straight Win

Wednesday, February 28

Houston, Texas

8:00 PM

Temple University

11-17,4-11AAC

Rice

11-17,5-10AAC

Temple

Rice

Photo by: Robin Hsiao

Stifling Defense, Balanced Scoring Leads Men's Basketball to Third Straight Win

2.28.24 | Men's Basketball

Box Score

HOUSTON – Using a balanced scoring effort and stifling defense, the Temple University men's basketball team won its third consecutive game, claiming a 65-43 win against the Rice Owls on Wednesday night.

BY THE NUMBERS

Hysier Miller led all scorers with 16 points in the contest, going 4-for-7 from beyond the arc while dishing four assists.
Jordan Riley, Steve Settle III and Sam Hofman each scored eight. Hofman added a team-high nine rebounds.
Zion Stanford and Shane Dezonie netted seven apiece.
The Owls held Rice to 14-for-54 shooting in the game. The 25.9 percent opponent shooting and 43 points were Temple season bests on defense.
The 19 points Temple surrendered in the opening 20 minutes were the fewest allowed by TU in a half this season.
It was Temple's fifth consecutive game with less than 10 turnovers, giving the ball away just eight times.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The battle of Owls was a defensive one at the start on as an early 8-3 lead from Temple was followed by five in a row by Rice, with the teams knotted 8-8 at the 11:34 mark. TU began to find its stroke, going on an 8-1 spurt of its own, capped by a Riley dunk, forcing a Rice timeout and giving Temple a 16-11 lead as the first half approached seven minutes remaining.
Rice closed the gap to two on a pair of free throws with 3:30 to go before TU scored the final seven of the half. The final Temple points in the frame came on back-to-back treys from Miller and Matteo Picarelli, at TU took a 28-19 lead into the break.
All the momentum from the end of the first 20 minutes carried over to the start of the second half as Temple went on a 12-2 run to get things started with four different players finding the scoring column. TU continued to hammer away on both sides of the ball, as a Stanford layup through traffic extended the lead to 46-26 with 11:47 remaining. During that same starting span of the stanza, Temple held Rice to 2-for-13 shooting.
TU eventually took the lead out to 55-28 before Rice scored 13 in a row to make the contest a little less comfortable. Miller settled things down, hitting three-pointers on consecutive trips down the floor to put Temple back on top 61-41.

UP NEXT
The Owls return home for Senior Day against Tulsa on Saturday, March 2. Tipoff from the Liacouras Center is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. The game is presented by PFCU.