Exclusive: Temple head coach Adam Fisher on what to know about new Syracuse guard Aiden Tobiason

In the offseason after his freshman year with Temple, Aiden Tobiason met with the Owls’ staff. He knew that Temple was set to lose just about all of its highest-usage players, including star guard Jamal Mashburn, and the expectations were laid out clearly.

“We asked him last summer,” head coach Adam Fisher told Nunes Magician. “Are you ready to make a big jump from freshman to sophomore year?”

Fisher told Tobiason that his role would expand from being one of the lowest-usage rotation players in the country into being one of the Owls’ key players, and he lived up to that expectation.

“He was a guy that really wanted to work on his craft all summer,” Fisher said. “He watched a ton of film, and he lived in the gym. He was so coachable. He knew he wanted to make a jump, and he put all the time and work into it.”

Tobiason shined for Temple, going from 4.8 points per contest to 15.3, which was second on the team, while shooting 48% from the field. On the last day of January, Tobiason scored 22 points to lead the Owls to a win over a South Florida team that wouldn’t lose again until the NCAA Tournament. After the game, he joked about how much Tobiason had improved.

“We’ve got to be careful with the nice things we say about players because the transfer portal comes so he needs more work and needs to be back,” he said.

His continued growth over the final month of the season made it impossible for the Owls to retain him. And he committed to Syracuse to join Gerry McNamara’s first team.

So how did Tobiason get better from his freshman to sophomore year?

“I think it started with the strength,” Fisher told Nunes Magician. “When you go from high school to college, it’s a big jump, and I think he got stronger. I thought he really worked on his shot and his explosiveness, too.”

The player that Temple signed out of St. Elizabeth High School in Wilmington, Delaware is much different from the player that the Orange are getting, but Fisher doesn’t want to call him a late bloomer.