Tim Jankovich is aware he says the same thing multiple times on occasion. Usually, as he likes to say, it because he truly means it. Sometimes it about the toughness of his team and other times it is typically centered on his road game mantra.
In any conference, it is difficult to win on the road. Philadelphia is no exception as the Mustangs head into Temple, a place that the Owls defend at an exceptionally high clip.
“It is tough to win on the road on good team’s floors,” Jankovich said of the American Conference. “The so called ‘bottom’ of the league can beat anyone.”
Temple may be one of those teams on the bottom of the conference, sitting at 3-7 and third to last. Winless since Jan. 15, a surprising home win over then 16th ranked Wichita State, it has been a tough go for the Owls. Among its five straight losses, SMU was its first. The Mustangs beat Temple in Dallas, 68-52, a handful of weeks ago.
None of that is on the team’s mind right now as it makes the flight to the East Coast. As Tim Jankovich noted, every game has its own personality and getting caught up in the trap of looking at the past is a recipe for disaster in the present.
It will be an 11 am CT tip on ESPNU for the Mustangs on Saturday morning.
Scouting the Mustangs:
It is always a struggle for coaches to choose between adding and perfecting. With a week off, Jankovich has said it will be a balance between those two ideas.
“It is always a debate in a coach’s mind of what we can tweak and change or just what we can get better at what we are doing,” Jankovich said. “New things are always slower to get to the game. There are some subtle things I think we need to adjust but I don’t think we have anything major.”
Coming off a win that might have appeared more lopsided than the final score against Temple, SMU said the mindset cannot relax. All the typical clichés were thrown out in the leadup to the Temple rematch, but it might be one statistic that actually makes the difference.
Temple’s offense is sputtering of late, but the Owls are very efficient in transition. The achilleas heel of SMU this season, transition defense. With that in mind, if the Mustangs can contain this aspect of the contest it will be a seventh win in the conference slate.
Scouting the Owls:
The struggles for Temple have been well documented. Winless is nearly a month, the Owls have dropped to .500 on the season and the campaign is hanging on by a thread at this point to put it mildly. The experience of the guards on the roster once looked ready to attack the American but now are just limping to the finish. A home game at this juncture is the last ditch effort for a Temple team that will look to see if it even has one last gasp in it.
Quinton Rose is still in an Owl uniform, leading as a senior with a new coach. His explosiveness in the open court is something to marvel at but it has not translated into wins. The defensive intensity of the program is there but the offense has proved to be too inefficient of late to keep up in an offensively skilled conference.
Keys to the game:
Transition, transition, transition. That has to be harped on all week as SMU faces a team that really scores best in the full court. If this becomes a half-court game the Mustangs will have a heavy advantage.
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February 08, 2020 at 07:37AM
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PREVIEW: Owl rematch poses typical American Conference challenge - 247Sports
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