Temple @ Tulsa preview

Last Meeting ( Feb 23, 2019 ) Tulsa 73, Temple 84

Temple recently opened league play with a victory and Tulsa will attempt to follow suit Friday when it hosts the Owls in American Athletic Conference play. Temple slipped past Central Florida in its conference opener on Tuesday thanks to a defense that has been consistently solid through the season's first two months.

The Owls enter Thursday's action ranked 40th nationally in points allowed (61.9) and are coming off a game in which they held the Knights to 58 points (thanks in part to 6-of-24 from 3-point range). Temple held UCF without a field goal for the final five minutes of the game as the team buckled down defensively on leading scorer Collin Smith. "Our perimeter (defenders) were active on their ballhandlers, on their passers, and they were just trying to front (Smith) and just be physical with him as much as possible, just try to keep it out of his hands," Owls coach Aaron McKie told reporters. "And I thought it disrupted the flow of their offense a little bit.” Tulsa enters having lost three straight games and, after this contest, plays three of its next four games on the road.

TIME: 9 p.m. ET. TV: ESPNU

ABOUT TEMPLE (9-3, 1-0 American): Quinton Rose paved the way with 16 points in the win over UCF but shot below 40 percent from the field for the third straight game. De'Vondre Perry added 11 points and is shooting 53.1 percent from the field along with 51.5 percent from 3-point range overall while averaging 7.8 points - fifth on the team. After Rose (14.3 points) comes Nate Pierre-Louis (11.2), Alani Moore II (9.9) and Jake Forrester (8.6), a transfer from Indiana who had three points and six turnovers in an uncharacteristically poor performance against the Knights.

ABOUT TULSA (8-5, 0-0): The Golden Hurricane's last game Sunday was a competitive 69-67 loss at Kansas State in which the team employed a balanced attack, as 10 players registered 2-to-12 points and nobody took more than nine shots. LSU transfer Brandon Rachal (team highs of 14.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.1 steals) was held to single-digit points for the first time since early November. Darien Jackson (9.3 points) continued his sizzling play of late as he added 10 points Sunday and the junior guard is 21-of-31 from the field over the last five outings.

BUZZER BEATERS

1. Tulsa defeated Temple at home by 18 last season before losing the rematch on the road 84-73.

2. Moore was 1-of-4 from 3-point range versus UCF after shooting 12-of-20 from beyond the arc over the previous three games.

3. Rose has not shot above 43 percent in any game this season.

PREDICTION: Temple 67, Tulsa 64