Temple’s South Carolina blues continue in blowout loss to Boise State

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Temple hoped a quick turnaround with a noon tipoff after Thursday night’s 75-48 blowout loss to Clemson could solve some of their offensive and defensive woes.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case as the Owls couldn’t get on track in another lopsided loss, this time to Boise State, 82-62, at the Shriner’s Children’s Classic at the T.D. Bank Arena.

Khalif Battle led the Owls (1-3) with 19 points after he had four in the loss to Clemson.

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Temple will play the loser of Friday night’s Elon-Ole Miss on Sunday at 1 p.m.

Facing a 15-point deficit at halftime, Temple couldn’t generate any momentum in the opening minutes of the second half, as Boise State began to take control with an 8-2 run in the first three minutes that gave them a 51-32 cushion with 15 minutes, 47 seconds left. Battle’s tap-in broke a three-minute scoring drought.

Temple trailed by 20 or more points over the final 15 minutes.

The Owls again were plagued with turnovers as they committed 17 and shot just 41.7% from the field.

“We’re not there now,” said Temple head coach Aaron McKie. “We’re not connecting. We have too many careless turnovers. Offensively, we’re not putting two halves together. We have some spurts, but we can’t contain it.

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Boise State (2-2) had a balanced attack led by Emmauel Akot’s 16 points, and they posed Temple a problem throughout the game from the three-point line, where they converted 11 of their first 17.

“We have had three pretty good tests in Boise State, USC, and Clemson,” said McKie. “Defensively, we didn’t get it done. They played together well, and got a lot of easy baskets. That’s something we need to do.”

Against Clemson on Thursday, Temple started quickly but went into a shooting funk and their defense consequently sagged, falling behind by double digits at halftime.

The opening script against Boise State was similar.

Boise State took advantage of Temple’s sluggish start, as the Owls hit five of their first 11 shots and committed seven turnovers in the game’s first eight minutes. As a result, the Broncos went on an early 11-2 run that gave them a 17-10 advantage.

But Temple rallied to close to within 19-17 on Battle’s three from the corner that was part of a 7-2 spurt.

“We have to reevaluate where we are,” said Battle. “We have been turning the ball over too much, and we can’t get fluid. We have to try and figure this out. We have a lot of season left, but we have to get better defensively.”

Boise State took a 31-21 with 4:21 left in the opening half, and the Broncos boosted their lead to 43-28 at the half when Naje Smith drained a long three-point attempt at the buzzer to cap a 24-11 run.

The Owls shot just 45.5% from the field in the game’s first 20 minutes.

“We haven’t played together much offensively and defensively for 40 minutes,” said Battle. “I know have to prepare myself better as well as the rest of the guys.”