Freshman Austin Rivers leads Duke with a 15.4 per game scoring average.
It wasn't that long ago when the Duke-Temple basketball series was knotted at nine wins apiece. A 59-58 Owls victory over the Blue Devils in Jan. 1996 at the old Spectrum in Philadelphia pushed the all-time numbers level at 9-9, and as it turned out, the only win for longtime Temple head coach John Chaney against Duke's Mike Krzyzewski.
The series has belonged to the Blue Devils since then, and they'll look for their 10th consecutive win vs. Temple when the clubs collide Wednesday night at Philly's Wells Fargo Center. The earliest of spreads available listed Duke as a 6½-point favorite with 150 for the NCAA odds total.
Krzyzewski and Duke will be using this game as a springboard into their ACC schedule. The Blue Devils' current 12-1 record has them ranked third by the coaches and fifth by the AP. The 6-7 mark against the spread could easily be better despite the extra points they're saddled with as a public squad on the college basketball betting side of the coin. Only two of the spread defeats were ugly, the 85-63 outright loss at Ohio State as 7½-point underdogs and the season opener vs. Belmont, a 77-76 escape as 11-point chalk.
This year's Duke squad isn't much different from other groups Krzyzewski has put on the floor, though the scoring burden is being spread around a little more than last year's crew that was dominated by Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler. Krzyzewski isn't used to having "one-&done" performers – or in the case of Kyrie Irving, last year's fab frosh, "half-&-done" – and freshman Austin Rivers has done an outstanding job so far stepping in for not only Irving, but Smith as well.
Rivers leads a foursome of double-digit scorers with 15.4 per game, and combines with Seth Curry (13.2 PPG) to form a fantastic guard duo. Junior guard Andre Dawkins isn't far from making it a quintet of double-digit scorers with his 9.4 average.
Ryan Kelly plus the Plumlee Brothers, Mason and Miles, round out the top half-dozen on the scoring front and account for about 60 percent of the glass work. The Plumlee's, especially Mason, are doing their part to keep this from being a great free-throw shooting group, something to watch in this game and upcoming ACC tilts.
Temple (9-3 SU, 5-7 ATS) was perhaps rusty coming out of the Christmas break, or maybe the Owls were already looking ahead to this matchup when pulling off close wins vs. Buffalo (87-85, OT) and at Delaware (66-63). They were favored by nine and seven points respectively in those games.
The Owls are also still playing without their big center Micheal Eric. The 6-foot-11 senior hasn't seen the floor since just before Thanksgiving, and is expected to be out at least through mid-January if not longer as he tries to heal his right knee that was injured in a November practice. The injury is to the same knee he injured last February and required surgery.
With Eric out, it has forced Fran Dunphy to rely more on redshirt freshman Anthony Lee on the inside. Lee has responded well on the boards but has not been a consistent scoring threat so far.
The offensive load falls on the guard trio of Ramone Moore, Khalif Wyatt and Juan Fernandez. Moore leads the group with 17.4 points per game, with Wyatt (14.2) and Fernandez (13.3) trailing.
Though not an annual clash, Duke and Temple have been getting together regularly in recent years, and the Blue Devils at -7½ will be one of the smallest spreads in a while if it holds. Duke has been a 10-21 point favorite in the last six meetings, the two teams splitting those tickets 3-3. The 'under' has been the winner in each of the last three head-to-head contests.
Those recent 'unders' are in sharp contrast to current season trends for both teams. Temple is 9-3 'over' with four of the Owls' last five games going that direction. Duke comes in 9-4 'over,' 4-2 to the high side the past six.
ESPN2 will have this tip a few minutes past 7:00 p.m. (ET). Duke heads from Philadelphia to Atlanta for Saturday's ACC opener against Georgia Tech. Temple begins A-10 play the same day back on its real home floor when the Dayton Flyers visit the Liacouras Center.