Gameday preview: East Carolina at Temple
East Carolina (4-3, 2-1 American Conference) at Temple (5-3, 3-1 American Conference)
Game time: 2 p.m.
Streaming: ESPN+
Location: Lincoln Financial Field
Temple-Tulsa history: ECU leads the all-time series, 12-9
Last meeting: ECU 56, Temple 34 on Oct. 26, 2024.
What’s at stake Saturday for Temple is pretty simple. If the Owls beat East Carolina, they become bowl-eligible for the first time since 2019 and keep their hopes alive of playing for an American Conference championship.
“The kids all know that the next one makes them bowl eligible,” Temple head coach K.C. Keeler said during his weekly Monday press conference. “That’s something we talked about from the first day I got here, about what our goals were, and getting into a bowl and then go winning the bowls.”
Making it happen Saturday is well within Temple’s reach, but it won’t come easily.
When Temple is on offense
Offensive coordinator Tyler Walker’s scheme has made a remarkable difference for a program that had stumbled through four-straight 3-9 seasons. Temple has scored an average of 33.6 points per game and rushed for 173 yards per contest, a much-better total than last year’s anemic 92.8 yards-per-game rushing mark. And through the air, quarterback Evan Simon is having one of the better seasons of any FBS quarterback, having thrown for 1,610 yards and 21 touchdowns without throwing an interception in 209 pass attempts.
Several of the available weapons around Simon are having career seasons, too. Former UCLA quarterback recruit Kajiya Hollawayne, who caught 10 passes for 85 yards and three touchdowns on 15 targets at Tulsa last week, leads the team with 31 catches for 426 yards and six touchdowns, all career highs. Not far behind him is junior tight end Peter Clarke, whose career-high numbers of 23 catches for 378 yards and four touchdowns to go with a 16.4 yards-per-catch mark show he’s become much more than an in-line blocking tight end. Wideouts JoJo Bermudez (28 catches, 371 yards, 4 touchdowns) and Colin Chase (21 catches, 207 yards, 2 touchdowns) have allowed Simon to scan and spread the field through the season’s first eight games, and Jay Ducker (638 yards, 5 touchdowns) and Hunter Smith (317 yards, 2 touchdowns, 7.0 yards per carry) have paced Temple’s revived running attack.
“I think the biggest compliment is the amount of weapons we have,” Clarke told OwlScoop on this week’s episode of The Scoop. ”It’s always great to have that when you have Colin, Chase, KWay (Hollawayne), JoJo, me, Ryder (Kusch), Evan’s a weapon himself, and then you have a great group of running backs who can run the football behind an offensive line that has just emerged from last year. It’s like, how do you cover everyone? That’s the first problem defenses face is, are we going to double this guy? Are we going to make an emphasis of that dude? And then we’re just going to exploit another hole we find, so that’s the first thing that allows this offense to blow up.”
Facing Temple this week is the second-best defense they will have seen to date this season behind Oklahoma’s unit.
Under head coach Blake Harrell, the program’s former defensive coordinator, ECU has allowed just 17.1 points per game, the lowest total in the American Conference and the 16th-best in the nation among FBS program. The Pirates also own the conference’s third-best rushing defense. Opposing teams have managed just 118.9 rushing yards per game against ECU, and the Pirates have given up just six rushing touchdowns this season, the lowest mark in the American.
Asked about ECU’s defense Monday, Keeler credited the play of the Pirates’ defensive line which includes Jasiyah Robinson, J.D. Lampley and Zion Wilson. Robinson, a 6-foot-3, 252-pound fifth-year senior, has tallied 17 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss and a team-leading 2.5 sacks, while linebacker Samuel Dankah is second on the team in tackles with 33 and fifth among all American Conference players with seven tackles for a loss.
“They play a really physical defense,” Keeler said. “As I told our kids, I said they’re every bit as good as us, and that’s how we kind of have to look at things.”
ECU’s pass defense has been similarly impressive. While the Pirates have more of a middle-of-the-pack number in terms of average passing yards allowed per game (sixth in the conference at 220.7) and have intercepted just three passes, they have allowed just six touchdowns through the air, the lowest total in the league. ECU is also third in the conference with 17 sacks, and the Pirates have forced seven fumbled and sport the league’s best third-down defense. Teams have converted just 31.7% of their third-down opportunities, with Temple coming in second in that category in the American at 36.6%.
Temple should benefit from the return of left guard Eric King, who has missed the last two games with an injury while Mausa Palu has started in his place.
SLIGHT EDGE: ECU
When Temple is on defense
After playing the likes of some shiftier quarterbacks like Oklahoma’s John Mateer, Georgia Tech’s Haynes King and Tulsa’s Baylor Hayes, Temple will face a bit more of a pocket quarterback in ECU signal caller Kaitin Houser, who has thrown for 1,989 yards, 10 touchdowns and four interceptions through seven games. Houser, who played his first two college seasons at Michigan State, does have eight rushing touchdowns to his credit, including four last season and four this season, but he’s been tied to the pocket a lot more this season.
ECU’s rushing offense has averaged a pedestrian 3.8 yards per carry, with sophomore London Montgomery leading the way with 365 yards and three touchdowns, while Marlon Gunn has added 238 yards and three touchdowns of his own.
Having said that, the Pirates are playing with some momentum in the backfield. Montgomery (125 yards and a touchdown on 16 carries) is coming off his best game of the season in the Pirates’ 41-27 win over Tulsa back on Oct. 16, with his touchdown run coming from 51 yards out. Gunn, meanwhile, tallied 60 yards and a touchdown on 14 carries.
Houser made big plays in the passing game in the Tulsa win, connecting with wide receiver Anthony Smith on touchdown passes of 66 and 63 yards. Smith, a bigger target for Houser at 6-foot-3, 190 pounds, has 34 catches for 556 yards and three touchdowns this season, leading the team across the board in those categories.
Smith and fellow 6-foot-3 wideout Yannick Smith (30 catches, 374 yards, 2 touchdowns) will be tests for a Temple secondary that struggled last week at Tulsa and had safeties Avery Powell, Dontae Pollard and Jamere Jones all practicing on a limited basis Monday. And at Monday’s practice, the one session of the week open to the media, cornerback Ben Osueke was no longer practicing with the first team. Instead, it was redshirt freshmen Denzel Chavis and Adrian Laing.
Saturday might mark the potential return of single-digit defensive tackle Sekou Kromah, the team’s best and most versatile lineman who has missed the Navy and Tulsa games due to shoulder and oblique injuries. Keeler said Kromah is expected back this week to play against ECU, but that was Monday. If Kromah made it through the rest of this week’s practices unscathed, his level of production (14 tackles, 4.5 TFL and three sacks) would be a welcomed addition to a defense that has missed him.
Edge: Even
Special teams
East Carolina’s special teams haven’t moved the needle that much this season. The Pirates rank 76th nationally in punt returns (8.11 yards-per-return average) and 77th in kickoff returns (19.75 YPR), although London Montgomery does have a 53-yard kickoff return. Wide receiver Kyler Pearson returned the lone kickoff for ECU in its win over Tulsa.
Punter Ryan Leavy has averaged just 39.9 yards on 19 punts, but senior placekicker and New Hampshire transfer Nick Mazzie has been solid, converting 8 of his 10 field goal attempts, with a long of 46 yards. He missed a 53-yard try at NC State in the season opener and had a 26-yard field goal blocked two weeks later at Coastal Carolina. But if the game is on the line late, Harrell won’t be afraid to put Mazzie on the field to try a long field goal, as he made a season-long field goal of 52 yards last season with New Hampshire.
Temple placekicker Carl Hardin, like Mazzie, is 8-for-10 on field goals this season. He hit a career-long, 52-yard kick at Tulsa last Saturday. He came up a few yards short of hitting a 61-yard attempt at Georgia Tech earlier this season. Dante Atton, since being asked to punt 12 times against Oklahoma, has been much better in the five games that followed. He has averaged 40.9 yards on 40 punts with a long of 57 yards and dropped 17 inside the 20-yard line.
Temple has the edge here in the return game with JoJo Bermudez, who handles punt returns for the Owls, with some occasional help from Colin Chase. Bermudez has had three big returns called back due to penalties. The South Jersey product and Delaware transfer has averaged 15 yards on 10 punt returns with a long of 37 yards.
EDGE: Temple
