Temple comes from behind to beat Memphis
Saniyah Craig posted a double-double of 17 points and 10 rebounds, and Savannah Curry chipped in 11 points and seven rebounds to help lead Temple to a 65-62 win over Memphis Sunday afternoon at The Liacouras Center.
The Owls improved to 12-14 overall and 6-8 in American Conference play. They are tied with Charlotte for seventh place in the league standings with four regular season games to go before next month’s conference tournament in Birmingham.
While Temple found a way to win another close game, it needed the closing moments to fend off the American’s last-place team in Memphis, which fell to 8-19 overall and 2-12 in conference play. Part of that could perhaps be contributed to the Owls’ tendency to make things interesting down the stretch this season, but head coach Diane Richardson and her team played the second half without junior point guard Tristen Taylor, who didn’t return to the game after she fell in the second quarter.
In the postgame press conference, Richardson said Taylor “bumped her lower back.”
“We thought it would be best for her to stay out,” Richardson added.
If Taylor can’t go Wednesday, it will make things that much more difficult against a Rice team that has won 19 in a row and remains undefeated at 14-0 in conference play.
Temple helped itself by scoring 22 points off 21 Memphis turnovers and got 14 bench points, six of which came from freshman forward Ariana Meriedy on 3-of-5 shooting. And with Taylor off the floor, sophomore backup point guard Brianna Mead with season-high totals of four assists and 23 minutes.
Temple’s bench contributions, which also included nine rebounds from Felicia Jacobs, were important on a day when leading scorer Kaylah Turner managed just nine points – seven below her season scoring average of 16.3 points per game – on 4-of-17 shooting, including 1-of-6 from three-point range.
Although Curry (5-of-13) and Turner had subpar shooting nights and despite Jaleesa Molina playing 22 minutes without a rebound, all three players contributed in crunch time. With Temple trailing by a point with less than two minutes to go, Turner fed Molina for what proved to be the game-winning layup at the 1:26 mark of the fourth quarter, and Curry later assisted on a fastbreak layup by Craig 23 seconds later to put Temple ahead by three, a lead it did not relinquish the rest of the way.
