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KU vs. Temple

Doing their best Grinch impression, Kansas University’s men’s basketball team stopped Christmas on Saturday afternoon at Allen Fieldhouse.

Temple guard Dionte Christmas, who entered Saturday’s matchup coming off a 35-point performance in an upset of then-No. 8 Tennessee, struggled early and often in the Owls’ 71-59 loss to Kansas, going scoreless until the 1:51 mark in the first half and finishing just 6-for-14 from the field.

“They were just more focused than us on the defensive end,” said Christmas, a senior who rebounded to finish with 21 points. “... They did a lot of denying me the ball in the first half, and the second half as well. Those guys took advantage of that and just didn’t let me touch the ball the whole first half.”

Led by guards Tyshawn Taylor and Brady Morningstar, the latter of whom was responsible for shadowing Christmas throughout much of the game, the Jayhawks held the two-time Atlantic 10 scoring champion to just three first-half points.

Christmas attempted just four field goals in the first 20 minutes, and while he eventually got going late in the game — helping pull the Owls within two, 48-46, with 11:44 left in the second half — Kansas’ defensive effort proved too much to overcome.

In a game in which his team’s top scorer was taken out of sync early on, meanwhile, Owls coach Fran Dunphy looked for another of his starters — primarily center Sergio Olmos and guard Ryan Brooks — to fill the void.

Despite entering the game with five players averaging over nine points per game, however, Temple couldn’t produce a secondary threat Saturday. Forward Lavoy Allen finished with 10 points, but no other player managed to reach double figures for the Owls (5-4).

“They’re not going to let (Christmas) get too many good looks, there’s no question about that,” Dunphy said. “And we needed other guys to step up. We had a couple of good opportunities for other guys to make shots, we just didn’t make them.”

Temple shot just 36 percent from the field in the second half — 40 percent for the game — and was regularly forced into low-percentage shots and untimely turnovers.

In the end, Dunphy wasn’t exactly surprised by what he saw from the Jayhawks (8-2) defensively.

“We thought they would be real solid on defense,” he said. “And they were.”