Our surging Louisville Cardinals return to action tomorrow night to face the Temple Owls for the second time this season. The game will be shown on ESPN 2 at 9PM. The Cardinals played the Owls a few weeks ago on Feb 14th after the game had been postponed due to a winter storm. Louisville won that game 82-58. These teams don’t really have a long history and have only met six times overall with Temple holding the advantage 4-2. Temple (7-19, 2-12) is coming off a narrow overtime loss at #22/24 Memphis on Feb. 22, while the Cardinals (23-4, 12-2) come into the game having won six straight.

Temple has a history of being a good program and their fans are used to 20+ win seasons and good basketball. Those days seem like a like a long time ago and a team that was once thought to contend for the AAC title has struggled most of the season to get wins against anyone in the conference. But they have started to show some signs of life in the last couple of weeks beating #23 SMU and taking #22 Memphis to Overtime in their last game. Temple is one of only six teams in Division I to have four players averaging 13 or more points per game, and the Owls’ top four scorers, who have accounted for 83 percent of the team’s points, produced just 26 percent of last year’s total points. Their offense has started to be more consistent, but they are still struggling to find the consistency they once had with their feard match-up zone defense.

The Owls are lead by Dalton Pepper (17.2ppg, 5.1rpg, 2.3apg), Will Cummings (16.3ppg, 3.2rpg, 4.3apg), Quenton DeCosey (15.2ppg, 3.7rpg, 2.3apg), and Anthony Lee (13.8ppg, 8.8rpg, 0.8apg).
Pepper is 4th in the AAC in scoring, 2nd in the AAC in three pointers made and 10th in the AAC in three point percentage. Cummins is 5th in the league in scoring. DeCosey is 9th in the AAC in scoring and has had double figure scoring in 20 of 22 games. Lee leads the conference in rebounding, and has 10 double-doubles on the season. These guys are getting it done but not getting much help from the rest of the team.

Temple comes into Thursdays game averaging 73.2 points-per-game, while shooting 42.6% from the floor and 34.5% from 3-point range. The Owls are converting 69.8% of their attempts from the free-throw line. Defensively, Temple is allowing 77.2 points-per-game as the opposition is shooting 47.1% from the floor. The Owls are getting out-rebounding by their opponents 989-927 with a rebounding margin of -2.4 averaging 35.7 boards-per-contest.

Temple
2013-14 OVERALL RANKINGS
-POINTS PER GAME
73.2
120th
OVERALL
-REBOUNDS PER GAME
35.7
144th
OVERALL
-ASSISTS PER GAME
13.3
124th
OVERALL
-FIELD GOAL PCT
.426
266th
OVERALL

Kenpom Ranks
Overall – #155
Defense Adjustment Efficiency
– 108.3 ranks 255th
Offensive Adjustment Efficiency
– 109.5 ranks 80th

Our Cardinals are on a roll and the first game against Temple is when things really started to come together for this team. The Cards also have four players who average in double figures in scoring, led by Russ with 17.5 ppg (3rd in AAC) and Montrezl with 13.0 ppg to go with a team-best 8.2 rpg (3rd in AAC). Terry Rozier is also a player that is starting to emerge as a solid contributor in many ways. And other guys are filling their roles nicely.
The Owls are running into a buzz saw on Thursday night, and it won’t be too much fun for them. The Cardinals will use this one as a tune-up for the big game coming up on Saturday at Memphis. No Shave Till Dallas. Go Cards!