Charlotte Upsets (15) Temple
Temple has been hot lately. They were undefeated in conference play. Their only loss since December 1st was to Kansas and they are ranked 15th in the country. That has all changed after their game in Charlotte tonight. They lost to the 49ers 74-64 for one reason- early foul trouble.
Temple has the power to beat almost anyone as they showed with a 10 point win over Villanova (their only loss of the season). But when their best players get into foul trouble and need to sit on the bench for most of the 2nd half, they won’t have a good shot against anybody.
That’s what happened tonight. Lavoy Allen (10 ppg, 10rpg) and Juan Fernandez (13 ppg, 4 apg) both got charged with their 4th foul early in the 2nd half. Temple had to take out arguably their 2 most important players until the final minutes of the half and it all went downhill from there. The players stepping in for them kept Temple in the game for a while but were just not clutch enough to carry the team like the guys they were replacing.
Because of all their fouls, the number of free throws attempted by each team was ridiculously unbalanced. Temple was 7-11 from the foul line while Charlotte was 24-31. Do the math. That’s a 17 point difference. Temple gave them 24 easy points from the foul line. You can’t expect to beat anyone when the numbers are that uneven.
Watching that game it seemed that Temple was recovering from their win over Xavier and looking right past Charlotte to their Big 5 game against La Salle on Saturday.
If Temple can take one good thing from this deflating loss though it’s this- the way the Charlotte fans reacted to the win you would think they just won the Super Bowl or something. They stormed the court and confetti was falling from the ceiling. It seemed like that must have been their biggest win in school history. That’s a compliment I guess.
