WICHITA – Wichita State suffered its worst conference loss, falling 72-49 to Temple Tuesday evening in Charles Koch Arena.
“It was just a bad shooting night overall,” head coach Terry Nooner said. “When you shoot like that, you just don’t give yourself a chance. We’ll figure it out and have a better performance on Sunday.”
Wichita State (5-11, 1-3 AAC) was caught in an offensive slump, shooting just 1-for-19 (.053 from three and 18-for-64 (.281) from the field.
Temple (9-7, 3-1 AAC) shot 30-for-59 (.508) with seven three pointers as Demi Washington’s 20 points led the Owls to its second-straight conference victory.
Freshman Salese Blow led the Shockers in scoring for the fifth time this season with 10 points and dished out a career-best three assists. Jayla Murray was the team’s leading rebounder with nine.
Jeniah Thompson hit the Shockers’ only three of the night, finishing with eight points off the bench as the Wichita State bench scored over half of the Shockers’ points with Thompson (8), Murray (7), Aniya Bell (4), Ambah Kowcun (4), Ella Anciaux (3) and Raissa Nsabua (1) combining for 27 points.
The Shockers forced 25 turnovers but were unable to capitalize, scoring just five points off turnovers, compared to the Owls’ 21 points scored off 19 Wichita State turnovers.
Wichita State was out-rebounded for the seventh time this season, 46-33, and the Shockers have only won one game in which they lost the battle of the boards.
For the second-straight game, the Shockers struggled to score in the first quarter, only hitting one field goal with 1:09 left in the quarter to give the Owls a 15-5 advantage.
The offense continued to have to hard time in the second and third quarters as Temple took a 55-28 lead with one quarter to play.
Wichita State started to find its stride in the fourth quarter, out-scoring the Owls 21-17, but it was too little, too late.
The Shockers head back to the Lone Star State to take on North Texas (12-3, 2-1 AAC) Sunday at 2 p.m. in The Super Pit.