Prior to the 2024-25 season, Temple was picked to finish sixth in the American Athletic Conference preseason poll a year after making a miraculous run to the AAC championship game as a bottom-seeded team.
Temple lured in New Mexico transfer Jamal Mashburn Jr. and pried Lynn Geer III from Big 5 foe Saint Joseph’s in the offseason to bolster expectations and provide hope for a more complete season.
Temple ended the season seventh in the AAC, a step up from finishing at the bottom of the conference last season. However, head coach Adam Fisher’s second season at the helm left much to be desired.
Temple’s conference schedule was a roller coaster. They held a spot in the top four of the conference at one point and it seemed like the team had had a chance to compete for a conference title.
Then they unraveled in February, winning just two games while free-falling from down the conference standings. Temple enters the conference tournament as the No. 7 seed and will take on Tulsa on March 13. After beating the conference’s best and losing to the worst, throw away any and all expectations you might have for the Owls this week in the AAC tournament.
“We treat every game the same,” Fisher said. “We go into every game with the exact same preparation. For us, this is our approach, this is what we do. We’re very consistent with it, so that no game becomes too big or too low.”
It was reasonable for fans to be hopeful at the start of the conference play. Temple followed up its victory against nationally-ranked Memphis on Jan. 16 by defeating Tulane on Jan. 19, who was fourth in the conference at the time. The Owls needed a last-second shot to fall to defeat the Green Wave but looked like the much better team against the Tigers.
Temple led for 32 minutes in the upset win and was in control of the game despite a late surge from Memphis. The wins came after a non-conference slate where Temple lost just five games, with two coming against power five schools Boston College and Florida State. The game against the Seminoles was the most impressive, as the Owls kept up despite a significant size disadvantage.
The Owls were heading in the right direction, despite some growing pains, like their loss to La Salle on Nov. 30, 2024, that thwarted its attempt at a Big 5 championship. Mashburn had been carrying the offensive load as the fourth-leading scorer in the country but Temple’s depth was also on full display with guards Quante Berry and Zion Stanford taking leaps in their sophomore seasons.
Instead, Temple has been just about inconsistent since its victory against Memphis. The Owls lost to North Texas on Jan. 22, which was expected because of the Mean Green’s top-ranked scoring defense. But then Temple lost its next game to UTSA — the third-worst team in the conference.
The bad losses continued to snowball from there and Temple hasn’t been able to recover. They fell to Tulsa on Feb. 12, when they completely unraveled in the second half and managed to let a double-digit lead slip from their grasp. The same thing happened exactly a week later when bottom-feeder Charlotte handed Temple a fourth straight loss.
Even when Temple did pick up wins, it felt like they did so with a sour taste in their mouth. The Owls started the year 10-0 at The Liacouras Center but overtime games against ECU and Charlotte at home were uninspiring and optimism quickly faded away. Everything went wrong as Temple’s defense was the worst in the AAC, giving up 78 points per game and the offense often went stagnant.
However, unexpected circumstances contributed to the outcomes. Greer played just five games in Cherry and White before being suspended on Jan. 11. Guard Jameel Brown never touched the court after Dec. 7, 2024, after being away from the team for personal reasons and Mashburn missed seven of the last eight games with a toe injury.
Temple still looked competitive despite the unpredictable events and Mashburn’s absence, but the team doesn’t look the same even when he has played. Temple looked like it had a chance to compete in the AAC two months ago but now, the Owls may be lucky to escape their first tournament game unscathed.
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