Temple’s return to the Palestra ended with a hard-to-miss jolt: a 79-53 loss to Richmond on Sunday during the arena’s 100th-year celebration. The game was Temple’s first at the venue since 2022, and the crowd of 3,600 watched the Owls trail from the start and never recover.
Richmond scored the first 14 points before Temple finally got on the board nearly six minutes into the game, when Jordan Marsh made a free throw. By halftime, Temple was down 37-23, and the margin grew to as many as 31 points in the second half. The Owls finished with 16 turnovers, shot 29.6% from the field and went 7-for-32 from three-point range, numbers that explain why the offense never found a rhythm.
That stagnation went beyond the final totals. Adam Fisher said Temple did not open with the right intensity, and the team’s spacing and ball movement never settled in against Richmond’s switching defense. Fisher said the breakdowns left the offense stagnant, even after brief stretches that looked more organized. Richmond, by contrast, shot 50.8% from the field and finished with 22 assists on 30 made baskets, a clean attacking performance that kept Temple on its heels all afternoon.
For Derrick Morton-Rivera, the day still carried one personal milestone. He scored the first two points of his college career at the Palestra, a place that already meant something to him after he celebrated a consecutive Catholic League championship there with Father Judge in February. In a building loaded with memory, his first points came in the middle of a loss that drew boos and underlined how far Temple was from matching the moment around it.
The result also sharpened Temple’s long history at the arena in a simple way: a 280-143 record at the Palestra is strong, but it sits inside a much larger story of venue history for the program, one that stretches back to the years when Temple played there from 1955 to 1984. Sunday added another chapter, but not the celebratory one the setting suggested. Chris Mooney, a Philadelphia native who played at Princeton from 1990-94, said it was his first time coaching at the Palestra and called it the best venue there is. For Temple, the next question is less about the building than whether the offense can quickly find enough structure and urgency to avoid another night like this one.
