Princeton Defeats Temple in Season Opener
Written by: Adrian Maghacot
Photo by: Princeton Women’s Basketball
Despite facing a ranked team in their first game and having a major revamp over the offseason, the Owls made a valiant effort against Princeton in a 67-49 loss.
The Owls traveled to New Jersey to face off against the reigning Ivy League champion and March Madness contender #24 Princeton. The team came off of a dominating 116-48 exhibition win against Division II Saint Thomas Aquinas on November 1st.
Temple kicked off its season with many changes, and not only to the roster. Diane Richardson is the newest head coach after replacing Tonya Cardoza, Templeâs winningest coach of 14 years with a 251-188 record.Â
This is also the first year without superstar Mia Davis, who scored the most points in Temple Womenâs Basketball history and declared for the WNBA draft last spring. However, this did not deter the Owls.
Currently, eight of the 14 players on the roster are newcomers. Out of the group, senior guard Aleah Nelson was the most-prized acquisition after being selected to two All-CAA teams when she played at Towson. Despite transferring, Nelson will have the same head coach as Richardson was the schoolâs head coach for five years.
Temple struggled in the first quarter after scoring only nine points, with six from sophomore guard Jasha Clinton. The Owls also had trouble keeping the ball as they committed five turnovers and when they did have it, poor shooting was the running theme as the team was 3-14, including 0-6 outside the arc.
Princeton also struggled with efficient scoring after being 9-18, but held the Owls scoreless for five minutes while expanding their lead from one to 13 during that time frame. Last season, the Tigers finished ninth in the country in scoring margin at 16.8 and 21 of their wins were by a margin of 15 points.
Moving into the second quarter with the Owls down by 11 points, the scoring was quiet in the first four minutes with three points being scored. After that point, Temple got into a rhythm late in the quarter by scoring their last eight points in the final two minutes, half of which came from sophomore guard Tiarra East. With a strong run, Princetonâs lead was cut to three leading into the half.
The third quarter was much more even for both teams trading layups for the first four minutes until Princeton junior guard Kaitlyn Chen and sophomore forward Paige Morton scored a combined eight points. That helped extend the Tigerâs lead to nine with one last quarter.
Similar to the first quarter, the Owls struggled in the fourth quarter with scoring after adding five points in the first six minutes until sophomore forward Caranda Perea scored the teamâs first three-pointer. However, Princeton performed well after scoring 23 points throughout the quarter, which was attributed to the teamâs 14 rebounds and the Owls having foul trouble.
East was the Owlsâ best performer as she had a double-double, with 11 points and rebounds. Nelson had a less than stellar Temple debut as despite finishing the game with nine points, she had a field goal percentage of 14% and missed all six of her three-pointers.
Compared to the Owls, Princeton did not rely on a few scorers as 55 of the teamâs points came from the starters. One of those scorers was junior forward Ellie Mitchell, who had a double-double with 12 points and 15 rebounds.
Despite the loss, Temple performed well defensively as they had 11 steals, but were a lot more aggressive with the team ending with 26 personal fouls, 21 of them occurring in the second half.
The Owls finished the night with a field goal percentage of 29%, but really struggled with long-range shooting after making one of their 20 three-pointers. Temple was also outrebounded with 28 while Princeton had 51.
Temple (0-1, 0-0 AAC) will return to the Liacouras Center to face Georgetown (1-0, 0-0 Big East) on Saturday, November 12th, at 4:00 PM on ESPN+.
