The Temple Owls and the La Salle Explorers meet in college basketball action from the Palestra on Wednesday evening.
The Temple Owls will be looking to build on a 73-61 win over Drexel in their last game. Khalif Battle leads Temple in scoring with 18.7 PPG along with 3.6 RPG while Damian Dunn has 16.7 PPG with 3.1 RPG as well this season. Jamille Reynolds has 12 PPG with a team-high 6.7 RPG to lead the Owls on the glass, also capping off the scoring in double figures for the Owls up to this point in the year. Hysier Miller also has a team-high 5.4 APG to lead the Owls in assist department this season. As a team, Temple is averaging 70.6 PPG on 43.2% shooting from the field, 35.7% from three and 79.7% from the foul line this season.
The La Salle Explorers will hope to build on their 65-62 win over Binghamton last time out. Josh Nickleberry leads the Explorers in scoring with 15.3 PPG along with 3.5 RPG while Khalil Brantley has 14.3 PPG with 4.7 RPG and a team-high 4 APG to lead the Explorers in assists up to this point in the season. Hassan Drame has 11 PPG with a team-high 5.8 RPG to lead the Explorers in rebounding with Fousseyni Drame has 10.3 PPG with 5.2 RPG to cap off the group of double-digit scorers for La Salle up to this point in the season. As a team, La Salle is averaging 67.8 PPG on 40.3% shooting from the field, 32.9% from three point range and 65.9% from the foul line this season.
Temple is 2-7 ATS in their last 9 neutral site games and 0-5 ATS in their last 5 games following an ATS win while the under is 10-1 in their last 11 Wednesday games. La Salle is 1-4-1 ATS in their last 6 games following an ATS loss and 3-1-1 ATS in their last 5 games against a team with a losing record while the under is 4-0 in their last 4 games overall.
I get the case to be made for La Salle in this spot as these rivalry games can be a bit tricky and historically, Temple and La Salle have been a lot closer than a lot of folks give them credit for. However, Temple’s the slightly more battle tested team in my opinion in this game, and they’ve also been a little bit better in terms of efficiency. I’ll lay the points with Temple in this one.