LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) - Quinton Rose scored 19 points and Temple used an 11-0 second-half run to pull away from cold-shooting Texas A&M for a 65-42 victory in the Orlando Invitational on Friday.
Alani Moore II had 14 points and Monty Scott finished with 11 for the Owls (5-1), who rebounded from a seven-point loss to fifth-ranked Maryland to advance to the fifth-place game of the eight-team tournament at Disney World.
Typically, this time of year your defense is a little better than your offense, but at some point you have to start making more open shots and we certainly got some looks,” Temple coach Aaron McKie said.
Texas A&M (3-3) trailed 32-18 at halftime and trimmed the double-digit deficit to 38-32 before Temple pulled away for good with help from the 11-0 surge that Moore finished with a 3-pointer to put the Owls up 51-35 with 5:46 remaining.
“Last night we hurt ourselves a lot because we didn’t share the ball as much as we should have,’’ McKie said. “We made a conscious effort to try and come out today and make one more pass and make our teammates better. I thought we did a pretty good job.”
Texas A&M missed 16 of their last 17 shots down the stretch and didn’t score at all in the final 2:51. The Aggies finished 13 of 58 from the field, including 6 of 33 on 3-point attempts.
Josh Nebo was the only Texas A&M player in double figures with 12 points.
“Other than the last three minutes of the second half, I thought our fight was much better,” Aggies coach Buzz Williams said. “Lowest number of turnovers thus far this season, highest number of offensive rebounds this season. And I think in an unspoken way, those are byproducts of how hard we were fighting.”
THE TAKEAWAY
Temple: Rose bounced back after he and Owls leading scorer Nate Pierre-Louis shot a combined 4 of 23 in Thursday’s loss to Maryland. Pierre-Louis, however, had another subpar game after missing all seven shots he took against Maryland and finishing with three points. The junior guard was 3 of 7 for eight points against Texas A&M, including 0 for 3 on 3-pointers.
Texas A&M: The Aggies shot 31 percent in losing to Harvard in the opening round and were even worse Friday, going 13 of 58 (22.4%).
UP NEXT:
Temple: Sunday’s fifth-place game.
Texas A&M: Sunday’s seventh-place game.
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