Thomas Muzekari
Staff Writer
On Thursday, Nov. 16, Temple’s Men’s Basketball will have its first game of the 2017-2018 season against Old Dominion in the Gildan Charleston Classic in Charleston, South Carolina. The game is the opening round of an eight-team tournament.
The Owls will look to bounce back this season after a disappointing season last year when the the team had just a 16-16 record, failing to make it to the postseason. Some of that can be attributed to some derailing injuries, specifically to Josh Brown, who was a senior last year, and Trey Lowe, who was a sophomore last year. Brown redshirted after missing all but five games last year due to an Achilles injury. He is returning for this season as a fifth-year senior. As for Lowe, a redshirt sophomore who impressed as a freshman, he is still recovering from being injured in a car accident in Feb. 2016.
Brown, a point guard, is an important leader for the Owls. “It’s nice to have him,” Head Coach Fran Dunphy said of his return. The fifth-year senior will be key to the Owls as he will presumably start in the backcourt alongside Shizz Alston Jr., a junior, who led the team in scoring last season.
Meanwhile, Quinton Rose, who showed many sparks last year as a freshman with his explosiveness and athleticism, will likely start as well in his second year on the team. Senior big man Obi Enechionyia will start as well. He will look to improve after a season in which he started red hot scoring the ball, especially from three-point range, but he later became very inconsistent, not performing as well as earlier in the year and not putting up the types of consistent numbers he had been. Enechionyia is huge for Temple, because if he is playing up to his potential like when he was early last year, he can put up big numbers and be crucial to the team’s success.
This year, Temple’s recruiting class has been set out to be the best it has had in awhile. It consists of four freshmen by the names of J.P. Moorman II, Nate Pierre-Louis, De’Vondre Perry, and Justyn Hamilton. They will look to step in and make contributions to the team right away.
Temple’s first home game was on Dec. 6 against Wisconsin. Following that, the Owls have home games against Big 5 rivals Saint Joseph’s and Villanova. Conference matchups include Cincinnati and Wichita State, which is a new member of the American Athletic Conference.
