East Carolina and Temple meet in their regular-season finale Saturday at Philadelphia with both coming off losses to American Athletic Conference foes.
East Carolina (6-5, 3-4 AAC) won three straight games to become bowl eligible, including a win at BYU, before losing 27-25 at Cincinnati.
The Pirates were routed 42-3 at home by Houston last week.
“We just didn’t have a good day,” said quarterback Holton Ahlers, who completed 15 of 30 passes for 182 yards. “Pretty much everything that could have went wrong went wrong. It was a tough one. I would have done anything to win that game.”
Keaton Mitchell gained a career-high 128 yards on 14 carries but it wasn’t enough as East Carolina was forced to punt six times.
Temple (3-8, 1-6) lost 23-3 at home against Cincinnati last week after succumbing 43-36 the week before at Houston.
The Owls were beset by four turnovers against the Bearcats.
Cincinnati controlled the time of possession 36:51 to 23:09.
Temple, which had 202 yards of total offense, was led defensively by linebacker Layton Jordan. He had 2.5 sacks to increase his season total to nine.
“We’ve just got to address the offense’s production, or lack thereof, and rally the troops and see if we can get that fixed this week for our last game, especially for our seniors,” Temple coach Stan Drayton said. “When you play against a good team like Cincinnati, you just can’t have turnovers and the mistakes that we made.”
Ahlers has 3,094 passing yards, eighth most in a single season in East Carolina history.
Mitchell has produced five-straight 100-yard performances, seven this season overall and 13 for his career.
He surpassed 1,000 yards this season (with 1,103), becoming the first Pirate since Tay Cooper (2012-13) to record consecutive 1,000-yard seasons.
Temple quarterback E.J. Warner has thrown for 2,501 yards, with 223 completions in 380 attempts, which are all school freshman records. He ranks sixth, fourth and sixth, respectively, in Temple’s single-season records in those categories.
–Field Level Media
