Temple University women’s basketball (2-3, 0-0 The American Athletic Conference) lost 59-41 against Princeton University (4-1, 0-0 The Ivy League) after a slow start on Tuesday night.
“We knew coming in here that Princeton was going to be a tough game for us,” said head coach Tonya Cardoza.” They’re a team that just plays extremely hard, very disciplined.”
Temple started out the first quarter extremely slow. Graduate student forward Mia Davis scored the Owls’ first basket with two minutes and 46 seconds left in the quarter. The Tigers had opened up a 15-2 lead by the time Davis made Temple’s first shot.
The Tigers made most of their shots by taking their time on each possession and forcing Temple to make mistakes on defense. The Tigers also had 19 rebounds in the first quarter, helping them end the first quarter with a 17-4 lead.
The Owls tried to slow down the Tigers’ pace at the start of the second quarter, but Princeton took off with a 6-0 run in the first two minutes.
Temple spent most of the second quarter not taking its time on offense and forcing bad shots.
“Sometimes we play too fast for ourselves,” Cardoza said. “We get in trouble when we aren’t composed.”
The Owls scored the first nine points of the second half including a 3-pointer by graduate student guard Jalynn Holmes, which cut the Tigers’ lead to 27-25. The Owls put the pressure on the Tigers in a full court press.
The Owls put Davis on the perimeter to help get her more shots, but the Tigers continued to double and triple Davis, which led her to commit offensive fouls in the third quarter.
The Tigers outrebounded the Owls 49 to 34.
“They outrebounded us by 15,” Cardoza said. “We missed the shots so we weren’t even giving ourselves an opportunity.”
Princeton had a 22-point lead with just more than four minutes left in the game, which was partly credited to running its offense efficiently and spreading the ball to different scorers.
The Owls struggled to catch up in the last few minutes of the game due to foul trouble and not setting up their teammates with open shot opportunities. Temple’s 41 points in the game was a season low.
Davis led the Owls with 11 points, followed closely by Holmes with nine points.
“Right now, I’m more concerned about us and what we’re doing,” Cardoza said. “We’re not the team I saw this summer. We’re not the type of team I thought we were two months ago, just getting back to being disciplined.”
The Owls will take on Villanova University (2-2, 0-0 Big East Conference) on the road Nov. 27 at 2 p.m.
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