Temple has Wichita State’s number.

The Owls are 6-3 all-time against the Shockers, including an upset victory in Philadelphia earlier this season.

Temple has also found success inside Charles Koch Arena, going 3-1. WSU has picked up two wins in the AAC Tournament against the Owls, with their only other win coming in 2018.

As the fifth-winningest program in college basketball history, the Owls have had some outstanding players who have been key to their success as an elite program.

“First of all, they’ve got great players,” Head Coach Gregg Marshall said during his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “They’ve had pros like Aaron McKie, Eddie Jones — just great players have come through that program over the years. They’re tough. They’re city kids and they want to win.”

The Temple loss in January was one of WSU’s worst this season and their first in conference play. It also sparked a downward trend after the Shockers’ 15-1 start to the season.

Marshall said the Temple game — along with the late-game sloppiness against UConn that proceeded it  — made for a particularly rough stretch for his team.

“We didn’t play well the last minute of the Connecticut game. We finally won it in overtime, but the second half of Temple was about as bad as we’ve played, and we’ve had some bad stretches of basketball,” Marshall said. “We’ve also had some very good stretches. That’s how you get to be 20-7.”

In that first game, Temple’s defensive pressure troubled WSU’s guards throughout. Marshall said that if the Shockers can move the ball more effectively on Thursday, they should find more success against the Owls’ press.

“Well, we need to attack their pressure. They had a 1-2-2 two-thirds-court nuisance press that slowed us down,” Marshall said. “We were very timid against it, and we’ve got to be more aggressive if they want to do that. We’ve got to reverse the ball, reverse the ball, take your shot and go.”

Prior to the first meeting between the two sides, sophomore guard Erik Stevenson was playing some of his best basketball of the season. However, Temple held WSU’s leading scorer scoreless on eight shots.

Marshall said the Owls’ lockdown defense against Stevenson instigated the sophomore’s shooting slump that lasted until the UCF game two weeks ago.

“It was the beginning of Erik’s prolonged slump until the Central Florida game,” Marshall said. “He looked off, and I asked him if anything was wrong physically, and he said something about his hips, which was the first time I heard anything about his hips not feeling great. But boy, we had some ugly basketball offensive possessions in that game. We had shots that were three to four feet off the mark. They took advantage of that and won.”

One player who found success against Temple’s defense was senior big man Jaime Echenique. The Owls refused to double team Echenique, who tallied a career-high 20 points to keep the Shockers in the game.

If the Shockers want to pull out the victory on Thursday, Echenqiue’s performance could be a major factor.

“We needed him to play well. He was the only one [last meeting],” Marshall said. “We were pounding the ball inside to him and they were allowing it to come in, and they didn’t really double him a whole lot. A lot of teams immediately double. They were staying out on the shooters and not giving all that to Erik, Dexter, Grant, Tyson — not coming off and giving them wide-open looks.”

Currently, the metrics indicate that WSU will get back in the win column. KenPom gives the Shockers an 82% chance of winning and predicts a 70-60 score. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Basketball Power Index gives the Shockers an 85.8% shot at victory.

With the game now being broadcasted on ESPN, the start time has been pushed back to 7:01 p.m. Thursday inside Koch Arena.