Owls add former Drexel, Indiana point guard Deuce Drake
Jason “Deuce” Drake, a well-traveled point guard who sat out last season at Indiana due to an injury, will be back in Philadelphia to play his college basketball.
Drake, who enjoyed a solid sophomore season at Drexel before transferring to the Big Ten, has signed with Temple out of the transfer portal, the program announced Thursday.
An Oak Park, Michigan native who started his college career at Cleveland State as a freshman before spending a JUCO season at Butler Community College in 2023-24, the 6-foot-1, 200-pound Drake will give head coach Adam Fisher and his staff more of a true point guard who can handle the ball and allow recent portal additions Dez White and Dallis Dillard to play off the ball in Temple’s newly-refurbished backcourt. Drake averaged 11.1 points, 3.1 points and 3.0 rebounds per game while shooting 42.8% from the floor and nearly 40% (40-for-101) from three two seasons ago at Drexel.
Back on Nov. 12, 2024, Drake was a footnote in Temple’s 69-61 Big 5 win over Drexel at the Liacouras Center, collecting four points, three rebounds and two assists in 29 minutes.
From there, however, Drake went on to produce 17 double-figure scoring games and topped the 20-point mark four times. He twice scored a season-high of 25 points, once against William & Mary during the regular season and again against Elon in the second round of the CAA conference tournament. In dropping his game-high 25 points that day, Drake shot 8-for-13 from the floor, 3-of-4 from three, 6-for-8 from the free-throw line and collected four assists, three rebounds and a steal and committed just one turnover in 36 minutes.
Drake entered the portal following his 2024-25 campaign at Drexel and signed with Indiana, but the program announced he had sustained a “lower body” injury last August not long before the Hoosiers left for their trip to Puerto Rico. That injury ended up keeping him out for the entire season.
With the additions of Drake, Dillard and White, Temple’s roster currently stands at seven scholarship players. Guards Gavin Griffiths and Cam Wallace are returning, and the Owls will welcome incoming freshman guard Derrick Morton-Rivera from Father Judge High School this summer. The Owls also announced on Monday the addition of former UTSA forward Baboucarr Njie, who averaged 9.4 points and 5.2 rebounds per game this past season for the Roadrunners.
