Temple will look to move above .500 when it travels to South Florida on Saturday.
The Owls (3-3, 1-1 American Athletic Conference) will have had the last two weeks to recover from a crushing 52-3 loss to then-No. 5 Cincinnati when they battle the Bulls.
Temple quarterbacks were sacked six times by the ferocious Cincinnati defense. Temple didn’t execute well in any area.
“We’ve got to get back to work, we’ve got to keep improving,” Temple head coach Rod Carey said. “The bye week came at a good time for us, and we’ll go from there.”
To be fair, Cincinnati appears to be on the way to a berth in the College Football Playoff.
All season, the Owls have responded in a big way after a frustrating loss.
“Playing a team like that you can’t really make too many mistakes, you’ve got to be locked in and execute,” quarterback D’Wan Mathis said. “We probably didn’t do our best today but we will bounce back and do better.”
“We didn’t play good,” Carey added. “We’ve got to coach better and we’ve got to play better.”
South Florida will look to rebound after a difficult 32-31 home loss to Tulsa last Saturday.
Instead of celebrating their second victory, the Bulls fell to 1-5 overall and 1-1 in the AAC. They built an early 14-point lead and still were unable to sustain an 11-point advantage with 4:30 remaining in the third quarter.
“Our guys did not play like a 1-4 football team that have been through what they’ve been through in five games (coming into this game),” South Florida head coach Jeff Scott said. “They played their hearts out. At the end of the day, we didn’t get it done at the very end when we had some opportunities.”
The Bulls’ defense must improve if they have a chance to defeat Temple. USF allowed 535 yards against Tulsa.
But the Bulls did force three turnovers and were energized by Brian Battie’s 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.
Through six games, the Bulls have struggled to put together a consistent 60-minute performance.
“It was a gut-wrenching loss,” Scott said. “The reason it hurts is not because we were up and let it go or any of that, it hurts because our guys played their tails off.”
–Field Level Media
