Rice has started this NCAAB season out fairly well, they’ve gone through their first ten going 7-3, with respectable losses to #81 Iowa State, #38 Northern Iowa, and #121 Lamar. (Northern Iowa and Lamar were close; Iowa State was a slaughter.) Ben Braun,who is Rice' coach, looks like he might lead his team to their first winning season since he was hired. In addition to this,They have played very well on their gym floor, sporting a 6-1 record. They have an impressive 79.1 ppg, get 42 boards pg, and shoot .474 from the floor.

That’s pretty much where we draw the line at complimenting Rice. We’re talking about a team who’s played the #341 strength of schedule out of a possible 345 teams going up against Temple. As for Temple, Lavoy Allen was great. We really loved watching him play. But Temple is doing fine without him as Eric and Wyatt are stepping up, and especially, Senior Ramone Moore has improved his game tremendously (17.8 ppg, 4 rebounds pg, .405 from beyond the arc). Temple shoots .463 on FG this year, just slightly below Rice….but they have the #27 overall NCAA strength of schedule. That’s over 300 spots. Their adjusted efficiency ranks #31 offensively and #63 defensively; Rice ranks 132 and 212. Temple is just so explosive offensively. All of the numbers indicate that they should feast on Rice tonight (wow, no pun intended with that one). Rice only won 2 games last year against Kenpom top 150 teams. Neither of those teams were even in the top 100. (Reminder, Temple is #39 currently, in Kenpom and we would argue they are underachieving this season.) Rice was projected to finish 8^th in C-USA this season and 146 in all NCAA. We have no reason to believe anything different will happen this year, or that they will keep it close tonight. We don’t see any individual mismatches in this game, but just think the Temple offense will get rolling and never look back. Rice is in for a rude awakening. Two of their last four games have been against unranked opponents (another reason their home record is inflated). The other two were Lamar and Houston Baptist. Lamar is decent at best (and they still lost by 6). Houston Baptist is absolutely terrible. They’re #329 overall according to Kenpom. In the end we see Temple rolling big in this one!