The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Temple closes out UConn with 18-2 run
Owls end game on 18-2 run to complete season sweep
THE SCORE TEMPLE 63, UCONN 58 Up next: The Huskies return home to host Tulsa on Saturday at 8 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA >> Quenton DeCosey scored 23 points, including his team’s final nine points, and Temple rallied to beat UConn 6358 Thursday night for its fourth straight win.
Daniel Dingle scored 12 of his career-high 15 points in the second half for the Owls (15-8, 9-3 American Athletic Conference), who overcome a late 12-point deficit by closing the game on a 21-4 run.
Shonn Miller scored 15 points and Rodney Purvis had 12 for UConn (17-7, 7-4), which had its three-game winning streak snapped.
The surging Owls have won seven of their last eight. The victory moved Temple into a firstplace tie with SMU for first place in the American Athletic Conference standings a game-and-ahalf ahead of UConn. Both teams are vying for the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament as SMU is ineligible for the postseason because of NCAA infractions.
Trailing by 12 with six minutes left, Dingle sparked a big rally by draining three 3-pointers during a two-minute stretch to cut UConn’s lead to 56-54 with 3:43 left. DeCosey then tied it up for Temple with 1:50 to go and, following a pair of Miller free throws on the other end, put the Owls up 59-58 on an acrobatic three-point play.
After Temple’s Josh Brown forced a steal, DeCosey hit two more free throws with 19.9 seconds left to put Temple up by
three. Before UConn could get a shot off to tie the game, Purvis was called for a double-dribble and DeCosey sealed the win with twomore free throws.
The Huskies went on a 12-2 run to surge ahead 16-10 midway through the first half before Coleman and DeCosey hit back-toback 3-pointers within 20 seconds of each other to tie the game. After the Huskies regained the lead by five, Temple closed the first half on a 9-2 run, capped by a buzzer-beating fadeaway from DeCosey, to take a 31-29 lead into halftime.
UConn took control coming out of the locker room with Miller sparking a 10-0 run to put the Huskies up 43-34 with 13:56 left. After scoring just two points in the first half, Miller had nine in the first five minutes of the second half.