Halftime: Temple 29, IU 26

If he wasn’t already, Temple’s Khalif Wyatt made it clear Friday in the Owls’ 76-72 upset victory over N.C. State that he was the cornerstone of Temple’s NCAA Tournament run.

He scored 31 points Friday, and he appeared to be the key to Temple making it out of Dayton still alive in the Big Dance.

After 20 minutes against the IU men’s basketball team Sunday in the Round of 32, Wyatt made just as big an impact, scoring 20 of Temple’s 29 first half points, once digging the Owls out of a 20-11 deficit all on his own while leading them to a 29-26 lead at halftime.

Junior guard Victor Oladipo guarded Wyatt for much of the half, as the pair traded buckets early, scoring their respective teams’ first four points.

Other than Wyatt, the Owls shot just 4-of-20 from the field, including a dismal 0-of-6 line from beyond the arc. The Owls continued to put up bricks from 3-point land, but their seven offensive rebounds kept them in the game as they took eight more shots than IU in the first half.

Sophomore forward Cody Zeller and Oladipo each had six early points, and after freshman forward Jeremy Hollowell hit a 3-pointer and junior forward Will Sheehey scored three-straight points, the Hoosiers held a nine-point lead, 18-9, with 11:08 left in the half.

It wasn’t quite the fast start the Hoosiers had amassed against James Madison Friday, but it appeared a comfortable lead.

But Wyatt outscored the Hoosiers 13-4 during a 6:44 stretch during the latter end of the half, and IU shot just 2-of-11 during the last 10 minutes of the first half.

Wyatt’s teammates scored the final five points in the half, grabbing the team’s first lead of the game off a dunk by Anthony Lee with 2:39 remaining, and they held onto it for the remainder of the half, nearly doubling it in the final seconds as Wyatt missed a last-second 3-pointer as the final seconds ticked off the clock.

-Nathan Brown