MURRAY UP: Links and Rumors from Georgetown’s Secret Temple Scrimmage (SCORE UPDATE)

With the season about two weeks away, anticipation for news about Hoyas hoops is steadily growing. The Georgetown Hoyas faced the Temple Owls in a scrimmage on October 22nd, in Philadelphia, and by all accounts, one guy named Brandon Murray played very well. The reports that this lunch blog received were that Murray was “aggressive,” “efficient,” and “good.” Jeff Goodman (who reports a second secret scrimmage against Liberty this upcoming weekend) relayed some solid news about the Hoyas and Temple.

Reports that Akok Akok scored 13 and Primo Spears having 13 points with 9 freaking assists sounds fantastic. Akok being healthy is a terrific start and Spears distributing indicates he might be set up as the lead PG, for now. Murray for 30 has a great ring to it.

Casual Hoya, himself, did some further investigation and found out that Dante Harris did not play, and D’ante Bass and Ryan Mutombo logged a few minutes, each.

The other rumor is that prodigal son Qudus Wahab only played sparingly due to 23 minutes after (updated) recovery from an illness. No other injury/illness news has developed, so that’s good to hear. By all accounts, the Hoyas did look sharper than last year this time.

With Mutombo only playing 3 minutes, that likely means Akok Akok played center for extended time. Moreover, some whispers of potential inconsistency issues in the backcourt could be troubling, but are pretty much expected with new guys out there and Dante Harris not playing.

Temple’s Zach Hicks scoring 19 points is probably a concern. The Owls’ 6’7” forward out of Camden, NJ is—you guessed it—a bit of a three-point shooter (37.4% last season, 6.6 attempts per game in conference play). Looking at his game log from last year, Hicks once shot 10-16 from three against Delaware State and went 5-11 against Tulane (scoring 21, his conference season high) and 3-9 against Memphis, among other decent perimeter efforts. Georgetown needs to shore up the perimeter defense this year (ranked #326 in the nation, at 36.9% last year per kempom). Understanding how infrequently hicks takes a two-pointer, there is little doubt that Hicks made 4-6 threes in this scrimmage, which just can’t happen.

Khalif Battle, the younger brother of former Syracuse guard Tyus Battle, is starting his third year with Temple after his freshman year with Butler. Battle scored 8 points in a loss to the Hoyas in February 2020, where he played 15 minutes and shot 2-6 from three. Battle with 15 points seems fine considering Spears had 13 points and 9 dimes.

The end result of the scrimmage is inconclusive per going rumors, with some news pointing to a Hoyas win, while other pointing to a loss. This Temple message board does not seem to have much more news to add.

One thing we do know, for now is that Brandon Murray can get to the bucket. We also know that—even if he stayed in the same hotel as the Padres—he likes to live dangerously by wearing the wrong hat in Philly.

Here are the links:

UPDATES: