Strong Second-Half Leads Temple over Tulsa 75-61

Tuesday, January 29

Reynolds Center

7:00 pm

Tulsa

9-11, 3-4AAC

Temple

6-14, 2-5AAC

Temple

Tulsa

Strong Second-Half Leads Temple over Tulsa 75-61

1/29/2019 9:33:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score

Final Stats in PDF
Final Stats in HTML
Season Stats in PDF

Temple's Alliya Butts and Mia Davis combined for 59 points in a 75-61 win over Tulsa on Tuesday night at the Donald W. Reynolds Center. Maddie Bittle led Tulsa with 15 points, followed by Desiree Lewis and Kendrian Elliott with 10 points apiece.

The Owls won its second consecutive game and improved to 6-14 overall and 2-5 in American Athletic Conference play, while Tulsa fell to 9-11 and 3-4 in The American with its fourth-straight loss.

Butts tallied a game-high 34 points, including 24 in the second half, and Davis scored 25 points in the Owls victory.

"Temple is so down personnel-wise that they depend on Mia and Alliya, and they came through for them tonight," said Tulsa head coach Matilda Mossman. "Alliya can get to the rim, she can shoot it off the bounce and from the three, and when you can do all three it makes it hard to stop her."

Temple outscored the Hurricane 46-27 in the second half by shooting 59-percent from the field in the half. The Owls went into the final period with a seven-point lead and doubled that to finish the game with a 14-point win.

Trailing by five points at halftime, Temple came out of the locker room in the third quarter on fire from the field and scored 27 third-period points for a 56-49 lead heading into the final quarter. The Owls scored on its first four shots of the third quarter to take a 38-37 lead in the first three minutes, and held that lead until Bittle's trey at the 3:17 mark put Tulsa ahead 49-48.

Temple closed out the third stanza on an 8-0 run for its seven-point lead at the end of three. Butts scored 16 of Temple's 27 third quarter points.

For the quarter, the Owls shot 69-percent from the field and 50-percent from 3-point range while Tulsa scored just 15 points on 29-percent shooting from the field.

Back-to-back three-pointers gave the Owls a 6-2 lead in the early going before the Hurricane scored the next eight points for a 10-6 lead. In the next three minutes, Temple outscored the Hurricane 8-3 to take a 14-13 lead at the 2:44 timeout.

Tulsa closed out the first quarter on a 6-2 run with three-pointers by Bittle and Alexis Gaulden for a 19-16 opening period lead.

The Hurricane opened the second quarter on a 15-5 run for a 34-21 lead, but the Owls closed the half on an 8-0 run to close its deficit to 34-29 at the intermission.

Tulsa converted 63.6-percent of its 3-pointers on 7-of-11, but was only 5-of-24 from two-point range to finish the first 20 minutes 12-of-35 from the field for 34-percent. Bittle led Tulsa with nine first-half points, followed by seven from Crystal Polk, while Temple's Davis led all scorers with 14 points.

Tulsa goes on the road Saturday to face the Memphis Tigers in a 1:00 p.m. game before returning to the Reynolds Center next Wednesday night, Feb. 6, against the SMU Mustangs with a 7 p.m. tip time.