SMU faces Temple with target on its back and is 'optimistic' for Kendric Davis
SMU Basketball takes its No. 1 spot in the American Athletic Conference to Temple for Wednesday’s 8 p.m. CT tip-off on ESPNU. The Mustangs now have the target on their back after two straight wins, which has them back in the mix for an NCAA Tournament bid.
“If we start hoping and wishing and then, ‘Oh my gosh,'” Jankovich said on the SMU postgame show after the East Carolina game. “Then of course, you don’t factor in the schedules. Well the next thing you know, so-and-so goes here and we’re going there and you know, the schedule has a lot to do (with it). All I’m trying to say there’s a lot of ball left. It’s conference college basketball, and now of course, it’ll be harder for us because we are where we are.
“So, we’re going to get all A games. We’re going to get A games for sure. We have. Houston certainly gave their A game. They knew what was at stake in this game and it’s going to be that way, all the way through. All we have are outstanding teams left, basically, in my opinion. So, we’re going to have to play well down the stretch.”
SMU Basketball monitoring pair of players for Temple game
Star point guard Kendric Davis left SMU’s win over East Carolina briefly with an injury. Jankovich didn’t offer up much intel on the elite guard, but said he’s hopeful for his status in another critical AAC matchup.
“We’ll see. Don’t know exactly,” Jankovich said on his weekly radio show on Monday. “I’ll be cautiously optimistic, but not overly optimistic. Hopefully, he can recover from that as quickly as possible.”
Forward Tristan Clark, who sat out SMU’s win over East Carolina, is someone SMU continues to be careful with this season. His knee is something SMU Basketball must monitor on a daily basis.
“Happened before. South Florida game at home or something like that,” Jankovich said. “We’ve said this multiple times, he doesn’t practice very much. We try to get him enough reps. We’re trying and he’s trying to get through the whole season, but sometimes it’s either a little more swollen or little more sore, we don’t want to have a big setback where we went too far so he did not play in that game. We hope it’s feeling good Wednesday night and he can play then.”
SMU Basketball faces stiff test in Temple
Temple gave SMU Basketball everything it could handle in the first meeting. As their season has gone on, the Owls have improved and are a team SMU can’t look past.
“Temple has to be one of the real surprise teams in our league this year, they were picked low, they started the season slowly,” Jankovich said. “You thought that’s their plight and wow, have they come on. They were really a tough out for us. I left Moody that night thinking about Wednesday night to come thinking that’s going to be one hard game. Outstanding defensive team. They’re holding their opponent to 39 percent overall and 29 percent from three. So impressed with their defense, especially. We’ve got a real challenge without question Wednesday night.”
The Owls are hoping to have their top two scorers back in the lineup for the game. Freshman point guard Jeremiah Williams injured his right shoulder in the first half of the team’s loss at South Florida (52-49) while redshirt freshman guard Damian Dunn injured his right ankle in the final minutes of that game. Both missed Temple’s overtime loss at Tulane Saturday and will be gametime decisions for the game against SMU Basketball.
