Game 8: Temple Owls at Nashville Hetwetters — Open Game Thread

Well, Vanderbilt played one good half of basketball at SMU on Saturday. And then, sporting a 40-28 halftime lead, the Commodores decided that the best course of action was to allow the Mustangs to score 36 points in a little over 10 minutes, on their way to an 84-72 loss in Dallas.

Anyway, tonight’s opponent is another AAC team, the Temple Owls, who come in to Memorial Gym on a four-game winning streak, though said winning streak has moved them up all of two spots in KenPom. That’s primarily because it’s come against terrible teams, with a neutral-court win over Elon followed by a one-point win over Delaware and unimpressive wins over Big Five rivals La Salle and Penn.

Vanderbilt has faced Temple three times before in shooty hoops, splitting two games in 1949, and then the Owls ended Eddie Fogler and Billy McCaffrey’s magical run with a 67-59 loss in the Seattle Kingdome in the 1993 Sweet 16. That was Fogler’s final game at Vanderbilt (rot in hell, Paul Hoolahan), and I cannot think of any more recent embarrassment at the hands of Temple.

(Insert two paragraphs of jokes about wet hets.)