Senior guards Kristen McCarthy and Shey Peddy carried the Owls on their backs Sunday afternoon at the Liacouras Center to give the women’s basketball team their fifth straight win, defeating Charlotte 65-55.
The senior duo scored 22 of the Owls first 24 points to push the team out to a 17-point lead early in the first half and never looked back. McCarthy finished with a game-high 23 and Peddy with 22.
McCarthy also collected a game-high ten rebounds, earning her fourth double-double of the year. She also led the team with four steals in 38 minutes of action for the starting forward.
Peddy added to her overall impressive statistics by dishing out six assists, grabbing seven rebounds, and connecting on four shots from beyond the arc.
The key stat of the game was the turnover battle as the Owls forced 20 while only committing 10 themselves. They also outscored the 49ers 20-6 in points off turnovers. Temple didn’t get any points off the bench as the reserves missed on all four field goal attempts but it didn’t matter as Peddy and McCarthy were already in double figures in scoring in the first ten minutes.
The Owls jumped out to a 24-7 lead thanks to some hot shooting but the 49ers were able to close the defecit to seven by the half. Peddy and McCarthy finished the half scoring 38 of the team’s 41 points combined. Peddy hit seven of eight from the field in the first half.
Both teams hot shooting cooled off in the second half with Temple and Charlotte shooting 29 and 23 percent, respectively. Charlotte did cut the lead down to four with a three-pointer to start the half but Temple countered with an 11-0 run to stretch it back out to 15, 52-37. The 49ers made a small counter themselves outscoring the Owls 8-2 over the next few minutes to bring it to 54-45 around the halfway mark of the half. Two lay-ups gave the Owls a 13-point lead but both teams failed to score for the next several minutes. An 8-0 run by Charlotte made it 60-53 with three and a half minutes to go but it wouldn’t get any closer than that.
The win pushed Temple to 12-8 overall and 5-1 in conference play. That puts them in third place in the Atlantic 10 conference behind Dayton and St. Bonaventure. The Owls will play inner-city rival St. Josephs next on Wednesday, February 1.
-Brandon Stoneburg
