Temple Men's Basketball
Temple in Danger of Missing Postseason as Losing Streak Hits 6
Temple Men’s Basketball lost their sixth game in a row on Sunday, March 1, falling in danger of dropping out of the AAC Tournament altogether with an 80-74 home loss to the Rice Owls (12-17, 6-10 American).
The Cherry and White (15-14, 7-9 American) now hold the No. 9 seed in the conference, their record tied with Memphis. The top ten teams qualify for the conference tournament; Rice and East Carolina each sit one game behind Temple with two regular season games remaining, so Philly’s Owls will need to snap out of their funk in a hurry if they want any chance at a tournament run.
Aiden Tobiason and Derrian Ford each scored 20 points for Temple, doing most of their damage in the second half as they tried to keep up with a 45-point onslaught from Rice. The Cherry and White trailed 11-8 early after a 7-0 run from Rice, then built up their largest lead of the game with an 11-2 span that included consecutive baskets from junior forward Gavin Griffiths.
The visitors punched and counterpunched in a game that saw 14 ties and 13 lead changes, but Ford scored before the buzzer to go ahead 36-35. A Jalen Smith three with 11:31 to play put Rice ahead 54-52: they never trailed again. Temple showed fight, cutting the deficit to 65-64 on a Ford triple after Rice built their lead as high as seven points, but the visitors made four of their last five shots to close out the win.
Up next, Temple Men’s Basketball will play their regular season home finale against Tulane at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 5.
