St. Joseph's thwarts Temple, 82-72

St. Joseph's followed one of its worst showings this season with arguably its best. After losing to visiting Richmond on Wednesday, St. Joseph's rebounded with Saturday's 82-72 win over Temple in an Atlantic 10 and Big Five matchup at a rocking Hagan Arena.

The Hawks are now 19-11 overall, 9-6 in the A-10 and shared the Big Five title with Temple as each produced 3-1 marks.

Temple (22-6, 11-3) saw its 11-game win streak snapped.

The victory snapped a St. Joseph's 10-game losing streak to the Owls, which included an 78-60 defeat earlier this year at the Liacouras Center on Jan. 28.

"The Richmond game was a letdown for everybody - us, the coaches, the fans - we were on such a great roll and let that slip away and we had that in our minds coming into this game," said St. Joseph's forward Halil Kanacevic, who had 14 points, 12 rebounds and six assists. "Temple is a great team and how bad they beat us the last time, all that makes this the one thing we had to win this game."

Langston Galloway led St. Joseph's with 22 points. In the first game against Temple, he was limited to seven points on 3-for-9 shooting.

"That last game provided motivation for us," Galloway said.

Backcourt mate Carl Jones and forward Ronald Roberts each scored 18 points for the Hawks. Roberts also contributed seven rebounds after getting 17 points and 10 rebounds in the first game against the Owls.

Temple's Ramone Moore and Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson each scored 15 points. Owls coach Fran Dunphy said Temple was out of character on both offense and defense.

"We didn't deserve to win tonight," Dunphy said. "We weren't tough enough, weren't smart enough, weren't knowledgeable enough of who we are to win a game like this at this place against a really good basketball team."

Temple trailed by 14 points with under five minutes left in the first half, but then took the lead and extended it to 47-44 lead on Michael Eric's dunk with 14:37 left in the second half. Eric finished with 14 points and 14 rebounds.

"When we got down, we didn't panic," said St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli.

St. Joseph's center C.J. Aiken had just five points and four rebounds, but he made a significant impact on defense with five blocked shots.

Leading 62-61, St. Joseph's put some distance with a 7-0 run that ended with Galloway hitting both ends of a one-and-one with 6 minutes, 13 seconds left. Temple never cut the deficit under six points the rest of the way.

St. Joseph's, which entered the game with an RPI of 57, has clinched at least home-court advantage in the first round of the Atlantic 10 Tournament and the Hawks, who end their regular season Wednesday at St. Bonaventure, could still earn a first-round bye in this scrambled conference.