Temple basketball: J.P. Moorman emerging as three-point threat for Owls
By Pan Karalis
J.P Moorman has been heating up from three-point range this year. Can he become a serious three-point threat for Temple basketball this season?
Around the New Year, I wrote that Temple basketball needed to diversify their offense a little more heading into conference play. They certainly didn’t have the offensive struggles they did in recent seasons, and a big part of the reason they scored such a high percentage of their points on two-point field goals was the amount of easy buckets they were getting in transition (they’re currently 48th nationally in defensive turnover percentage and 16th in steals), but they needed to find more ways to put the ball through the basket to compete with the likes of Houston and UCF in AAC play.
Temple wasn’t complety devoid of a deep threat; Shizz Alston, Jr. continues to climb Temple’s all-time three point list, totalling 205 for his career after Wednesday’s win at East Carolina, but the threes were few and far between from there. Despite being an almost 30% career three-point shooter, Quinton Rose is sitting below 20% on the season, and he hasn’t looked good getting there. He regularly airballs shots from beyond the arc or bricks them off the backboard, despite hitting a handful of timely shots from three-point range this year. Alani Moore, perhaps one of the more pure shooters on the team behind Alston, has only hit 13 threes this season on 31% shooting. I could regurgitate three-point statistics from everyone on the roster, but you get it; this just wasn’t a great three-point shooting team.
J.P Moorman wasn’t the best shooter coming out of high school, but he was comfortable enough to attempt 39 a year ago in 27 games his freshman year last season, hitting them at a 33% clip. To start the 2018-19 season, though, J.P missed his first eight over Temple’s first five games. If there was another three-point threat emerging behind Shizz Alston, it didn’t appear that it was going to be Fran Dunphy’s 6-foot-7 sophomore.
But when Temple met Cal in Brooklyn a few days before Thanskgiving, the threes finally started falling for the North Carolina native. He made both of his attempts against the Bears in a big Temple win, and has hit 14 of his last 22 shots from long range, and eight of his last 11. His coming-out party as a serious three-point threat very well may have been this past Saturday, when went three of four beyond the arc in an 82-80 overtime win against South Florida.
It’s still too soon to know whether Moorman can become a serious and consistent three point threat for the Owls going forward. The sample size is obviously pretty low, but he has been extremely hot since late November, and his confidence must be sky-high. The only way to find out if this has become a regular part of his arsenal is for him to keep shooting. Let ’em fly, J.P.