FAU ends Temple's season with a 63-59 first-round conference tournament defeat

Temple was a second-place team in the American Conference back on Feb. 7. 

Thirty-two days later, the Owls’ season ended in the first round of the conference tournament with a 63-59 loss to Florida Atlantic Wednesday night at Birmingham’s Legacy Arena.

In dropping eight of its last nine games, Temple’s season crashed out at 16-16 and in the first round of the conference tournament for the second-straight year. And in a fashion typical of  several of the Owls’ losses during the forgettable stretch, they had a chance to tie or win the game to keep their season going but could not close.

After forward Babatunde Durodola’s sound defense inside the game’s final minute helped force a Kanaan Carlyle turnover, Temple got the ball back, down two at 61-59 with 21 seconds to go. The Owls and Adam Fisher were out of timeouts, but the third-year head coach said he called the play that sent Ford to the rim.

As Ford drove to the basket, FAU freshman guard Josiah Parker swiped the ball out of Ford’s hands, off his leg and out of bounds with 3.9 seconds to go. Temple fouled Xander Pintelon quickly after the turnover, and Pintelon dropped in the free throws that put the game out of reach. 

Ford, who scored a team-high 16 points and hit both of his threes in 35 minutes, offered a sullen and forthright explanation of the final play. 

“Tried to get downhill, make something happen, lost the ball. That was it,” said Ford, who later added that he “can’t argue with the refs” when asked about what appeared to be an inconclusive replay. 

Temple could not challenge the play because it was out of timeouts. 

The play call that sent Ford to the rim had worked earlier this season, Fisher said, but it didn’t work Wednesday night. 

“It’s a call, it’s a set. You guys can go back and watch,” Fisher said. “We ran it multiple times this year. It’s something we work on and actually went through it yesterday with these guys, in case we didn’t have a timeout. And, you know, I think we got the look. Last time we ran it, he shot faked, got fouled, made two free throws. So they got the stop.”

Beyond Ford’s 16 points, Aiden Tobiason scored 12 on 5-of-9 shooting and turned the ball over just once in 37 minutes. Point guard Jordan Mason added 10 but struggled through a 4-for-16 shooting spell, including 0-for-4 from three. 

In Temple’s two regular-season losses to FAU, Gavin Griffiths scored a combined 34 points, including a 20-point, seven-rebound game on 8-of-11 shooting in the Feb. 26 matchup in Boca Raton. 

Wednesday night, FAU held the 6-foot-7 Griffiths scoreless and limited him to two missed shots, three rebounds and an assist in 24 minutes. 

“Obviously the way he played two-plus weeks ago at their place, the way he made shots in the first half, you knew they were going to try to take him away,” Fisher said of FAU’s defense on Griffiths. “And I think all season, he’s done some other things. He’s able to get a couple steals. He’s rebounded well. I know today’s numbers were a little bit low, but credit to them. They kind of took him out of some stuff. They were extremely physical. I thought that was, I mean, a top-two physical game we’ve played all season long. And again, credit to them. We needed some other guys to step up.”

Starting forward Jamai Felt gave Temple nine points and seven rebounds in 19 minutes and Durodola added eight points on 4-of-7 shooting off the bench, but Masiah Gilyard had just two points and two rebounds in 23 bench minutes. And while Temple itself shot 38% (23-for-60) from the floor and just 2-for-9 from three, FAU shot 50% (25-for-50) overall and 6-of-11 from three. 

In that sense, Temple’s defense left something to be desired, and two of the Owls’ defensive lapses came at a critical time.

Temple, which never led by more than three (21-18) and trailed by 29-27 at halftime, fell behind by eight in the second half after a bucket by Isaiah Elohim (10 points) that made it a 43-35 ballgame with 14:38 remaining, and FAU led by six at the 13:17 mark after a Maxim Logue basket. 

From there, FAU went on a scoring drought that lasted a little more than five minutes, but Temple didn’t fully take advantage of it. The Owls shaved just five points off that six-point lead and got as close as 45-44 after a pair of Gilyard free throws with 8:36 to go. 

FAU’s scoring drought ended when Temple lost Niccolo Moretti. The 6-foot-1 lefty hit consecutive threes from almost the same spot on the floor and pushed the Owls’ lead back out to five at 51-46 with 7:25 left. Those baskets were part of a 12-2 FAU run that opened an 11-point lead for the Owls, their largest of the game. 

Then came the 13-4 run that almost extended Temple’s season. Then came the disappointment and the familiar feeling of having the season end once again in the first round of the conference tournament. 

So how did things turn sour in the span of a little more than a month? Temple owned a 15-8 record, a 7-3 mark in conference play and found itself in a second-place tie in the conference standings following an 81-73 road win at East Carolina back on Feb. 7. And a week earlier, the Owls played arguably their best game of the season in a 79-78 win over South Florida, the league’s No. 1 team in the conference tournament. 

What happened after that?

“I think it stared before that,” Fisher began. 

Fisher pointed to the sudden passing of his close friend and Temple assistant coach Bill Courtney. The team learned of Courtney’s death less than 48 hours before its Jan. 14 road loss at Memphis. 

Temple won four of its next seven games after Courtney’s passing before the six-game losing streak that sent the season downhill fast. 

“When you’re around people, you don’t know how people are going to respond to that, losing somebody, and how it affects everybody differently,” Fisher said. “So even though we had won some games, that was when the change occurred. And then in the losing streak, in four of those games, you’re right there. So you just got to try to figure out a way to get a little bit more.”

FAU (18-14) played once again without leading scorer Devin Vanterpool, who has been out since mid-February with an ankle injury. The sophomore had been leading the team with 15.8 points and 6.3 rebounds per game, but the Owls found ways to mitigate his absence by getting timely shooting from Moretti, who went 7-of-9 from the floor and a perfect 3-for-3 from beyond the arc. The Bologna, Italy native finished with a game-high 19 points, 14 above his season average. 

As such, FAU moves on to face No. 6 seed North Texas in Thursday night’s second-round game. 

Temple, meanwhile, heads back home wondering how much of a roster rebuild awaits in the future. 

“Tomorrow starts the offseason. It does,” said Fisher, who owns a 49-50 record in his three seasons on North Broad Street. “This is now year-round. Our league, I think, has been the most depleted (by the NCAA’s transfer portal) the last two years. I expect the same this year. I wish I could sit here and tell you everybody’s coming back. I have no idea. I don’t think anybody does, right? You start to have some conversations, and there’s gonna be a lot of new guys on the roster, but we want to try to retain and we know we’ve got to make improvements. We’ve got to replace guys. We need to make sure that we are competitive — in all aspects. So that’s something we’ll start as early as tomorrow, trying to get ready for next year.”