Temple women’s team learns what life as ‘the hunted’ is like as Tulsa snaps five-game win streak

A five-game winning streak had vaulted the Temple women’s basketball team to the top of the American Athletic Conference standings. As surprising turnaround stories go, this is one of the best you’ll find in college hoops this season. The Owls were picked ninth in the 14-team conference’s preseason poll.

But they’d gone from the scrappy, upstart underdog to the team with the target on its back, and there’s a difference, Diane Richardson said. It was a point the second-year Temple coach wanted her team to be aware of during shootaround Wednesday, before Tulsa — a team that was one game back of Temple — came to the Liacouras Center.

“They’ve got to understand that they’ve not been in this place before and they’ve got to understand that now we are the hunted,” Richardson said. “What that means is we’ve got to do more than we’ve been doing.”

Final score: Tulsa 76, Temple 67. The Golden Hurricane (21-8, 11-5 AAC) outscored the Owls (17-11, 11-5) by 30-20 in the fourth quarter.

“Now they know,” Richardson said of her players. “We worked really hard to get here, but we didn’t work hard enough to stay here.”

What happened was pretty simple Wednesday night: Tulsa’s Temira Poindexter (30 points) and Delanie Crawford (24) — who combined for 71% of their team’s scoring output — had all the answers in the fourth quarter while the Owls struggled defensively and couldn’t get in an offensive rhythm once they fell behind.

Beyond the fourth quarter, which Richardson called a “self-sabotage,” it was Tulsa’s ability to connect from three-point range that made the difference, too. Tulsa made nine of its 26 attempts from beyond the arc while Temple shot 2-for-16.

Aleah Nelson and Tiarra East each scored 16 points for Temple, and Demi Washington added 15.

There were eight lead changes and six ties and each team led for more than 17 minutes. There’s a reason they’re now in a three-way tie with North Texas atop the AAC standings.

The loss, however, dropped Temple into the third seed with two games to go ahead of the conference tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. The Owls finish their regular season with winnable games at East Carolina (15-12, 8-8) Sunday and home vs. Florida Atlantic (10-17, 5-11) Wednesday.

They’re still in a pretty good spot as far as where they want to be. The American is a one-bid league this season, and Temple has locked itself into a bye to the quarterfinals, a pretty remarkable landing spot considering the preseason projection and 6-10 conference record last season.

» READ MORE: Temple men: Owls' entire starting five left last season. Here’s how they’re faring at new programs.

Richardson, understandably, wasn’t very interested in that perspective Wednesday night.

“There’s no such thing as a pretty good spot when you lose,” she said. “Our goal was to win every game to be sure. This was a setback today, but I told them we’ve got to get back on our horse and ride it, and I don’t think they knew what that meant because I’m so old and that’s an old saying.

“I was a little disappointed in our effort today. We know how to bounce back. I don’t think this is going to happen again.”

So far, they’ve more than earned the benefit of the doubt.