Temple MBB 2026-27 Season Preview: Make or Break Year for Adam Fisher?

The 2026-27 season could end up a make-or-break year for Temple Men’s Basketball head coach Adam Fisher. The Penn State grad holds a 49-51 record through three seasons and has hovered around .500 for the past two years.

With a pair of preseason all-conference players returning in senior Gavin Griffiths (6-foot-7, 215 pounds) and fifth year Derrick Ford (6-foot-4, 210 pounds), the Owls have a critical core that could help them take a leap in the American Conference. Picked to finish ninth of 13 teams in the league’s preseason poll, however, Temple hasn’t earned much benefit of the doubt.

Griffiths — no longer the viral ‘LeBron Frames’ after switching from sports goggles to contacts in the offseason — led the team in rebounding, three-pointers and blocks last season, a versatile floor stretcher who was the only player in Division I to record 60 threes and 50 blocks; Ford led Temple in scoring with 18.1 points per game. 

Rounding Out the Lineup

After that duo, transfers like senior guard Dez White (6-foot-3, 180 pounds) and fifth-year guard Deuce Drake (6-foot-2, 200 pounds) could step into an important role. White averaged 9.7 points and made 37.9 percent of his threes as a starter at Oregon State last year; Drake missed the season with a lower body injury while trying to make the jump to Indiana but put up 11.1 points and 3.1 assists with a 39.6 percent clip on threes at Drexel earlier in his career. That three-point upside gives the Owls some intrigue, but from there their options start to table off.

Assuming Griffiths plays the three, senior forward Edwin Suarez Jr. (6-foot-6, 225 pounds) is stocky but undersized for the four. Suarez started in 20 of his 31 games at Weber State last season and put up 9.2 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, but Temple will mark a leap in competition from the Big Sky Conference.

Point guard could go to either senior Jordan Marsh (5-foot-11, 150 pounds), a Malvern, Pa. native who put up 7.3 points and 2.3 rebounds in 18.4 minutes off the bench at Southern California last season, or true freshman Derrick Morton-Rivera (6-foot-4, 175 pounds), another local product who broke a series of records at Father Judge on the way to a three-star rating. Morton-Rivera put up 15.3 points and 4.2 assists per game as a senior while making 38 percent of his threes.

Graduate guard Dallis Dillard (6-foot-3, 180 pounds) averaged 20.6 points per game at IUP last season but will need to make the leap to Division I; with 4.7 assists per game, he has a chance to shake things up in the point guard rotation too.

Forwards Need to Prove Themselves

Junior Baboucarr Njie (6-foot-6, 205 pounds) is an athletic wing who could be in line for a breakout year after putting up 9.4 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game despite not spending much time in the starting lineup at UTSA… but his career 2-of-39 clip from three is a problem. Sir Isaac Herron (6-foot-10, 240 pounds) saw bench minutes at Oral Roberts and Louisiana Tech earlier in his career and could prove valuable in a similar role, fortifying Temple’s presence in the post; Mohamed Keita (7-foot-1, 230 pounds) and senior Georgia State transfer Christian Beam (7-foot-1, 255 pounds) are also big men in line for a handful of minutes.

Junior Cam Scott (6-foot-6, 180 pounds) played sparingly at South Carolina for two seasons, redshirting last year, while three-star combo guard Cam Wallace (6-foot-5, 200 pounds) saw a handful of minutes with Temple last year. Fellow sophomore Olin Chamberlain Jr. (6-foot-0, 180 pounds) is worth underlining based on name recognition alone; the grand nephew of one of the NBA’s greatest players ever, Chamberlain attended Saint Joseph’s Prep and won a pair of All-Catholic league nominations.