HOUSTON — Temple head coach Fran Dunphy talks about giving his players the green light to shoot. It’s something the Owls have earned based on their strong defensive efforts.
On Sunday against Houston, with leading scorer Quenton DeCosey struggling to find his shot, Obi Enechionyia and Devin Coleman picked up the offensive slack. And Josh Brown made two crucial free throws with six seconds remaining to put the Owls up by three points.
Enechionyia kept the Owls in the game with a career-high 26 points, mostly from long range, and Coleman’s go-ahead three-pointer with 15 seconds remaining broke a tie. Coleman's and Brown’s late heroics lifted the Owls to a 69-66 comeback win over the Cougars and more importantly, kept the Owls up a full game in first place in the American Athletic Conference.
“We give our guys a lot of freedom,” Dunphy said. “They give us everything they have at the defensive end, we’re going to give them a lot of freedom on the offensive end. And [Coleman] had the freedom to step up and shoot, and the ball went in.”
Down the stretch, the Owls made the big shot, and defensively, stopped the Cougars, who had turned a 13-point first-half Temple lead to a 54-44 Houston lead with 11:01 remaining in the game.
Enechionyia, a 6-9 sophomore from Springfield, Va., scored eight of Temple’s first 12 points and 11 of its first 17. He was just as effective late in the game en route to making 6 of 9 threes. Enechionyia’s clutch three-pointer with 55 seconds remaining tied the game at 64-64.
“They left me open a little bit,” Enechionyia said. “Anytime I’m open on the perimeter, I’m going to shoot it.
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“We had some stretches where we could have played better. Coming in, we knew we had to hit our shots and play well on defense. When we lock down on defense, it helps us on the offensive end.”
Enechionyia was 10 of 20 from the field and added seven rebounds as Temple (17-9, 11-3) avenged a 27-point home loss (77-50) to Houston from Jan. 2 and stayed a full game ahead of second-place SMU (22-4, 10-4) in the standings.
“Obi was terrific,” Dunphy said. “He made so many big shots. Got us off to a good start and he tied the game late. He’s so important to what we do. He’s changed in his mindset. He’s been very focused on his threes.”
Enechionyia, who was averaging 10 points per game, needed to be on. DeCosey, who entered as the team’s leading scorer at 16.4 points per game, had eight points on 2 of 12 from the field.
“When I’m not shooting well, we’re versatile enough where other guys can step up and Obi, he stepped up big,” DeCosey said. “Josh Brown with free throws and Dev with a big-time three down the stretch.
“We have other guys step up when I’m struggling. That’s what makes our team very good.”
Brown, who leads the conference in minutes and is fourth in the league in assists, had 10 defensive rebounds, three steals and five assists against the Cougars (19-8, 9-6), who had won three straight and six of their previous seven games. Coleman had eight points on 3 of 6 from the field, 2 of 4 on three-pointers.
Temple needed strong games from Enechionyia, Coleman and Brown to offset the trio of Rob Gray Jr., Damyean Dotson and Devonta Pollard. Dotson and Gray, who missed a 3-point attempt in the closing seconds that would have forced overtime, had 20 points each. Pollard collected 19 points and 14 rebounds.
“We know how to stay in the game when we’re down,” Enechionyia said. “That’s never been a problem for us to come back and win the game.”
With only four games remaining in the regular season before the conference tournament in Orlando, Fla. (March 10-13), Temple has the one-game lead over SMU, which is ineligible for postseason play. Cincinnati and Tulsa follow at 10-5 in the AAC.
The Owls play at Tulsa on Tuesday.
“This was a tough road win, the first of two games,” DeCosey said. “This is a big-time win and now we just have to focus on our next game with Tulsa.”
Sunday’s win at Hofheinz Pavilion was Temple’s ninth in its last 11 games. And it came against one of the conference’s most improved teams from a year ago.
“We were talking about this game, that we needed this one and didn’t talk about the Tulsa game at all,” Brown said. “We came in here fired up, started up with a big run, they came back and we stuck with it and came away with the victory.
“It’s a big one going on. We have bigger goals and we want to win the conference regular season and go from there. That loss that we took early on from them, it hurt us and we definitely thought about it on our way there. We couldn’t wait to come down and get the victory over them.”