Temple prides itself on an ‘equal-opportunity offense.’ Grad transfer Amaya Oliver is the latest beneficiary.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Temple women’s basketball coach Diane Richardson has confidence in her team, and she wants her players to feel it, too.

“This equal-opportunity offense allows everybody to be a star, and we want everybody to be a star,” she said. “It’s hard to defend five people. You can’t double-team anybody, because you can get scoring from everybody.”

Before Temple’s victory Monday night in the American Athletic Conference tournament quarterfinals, six Owls had been the leading scorer in a game this season, the product of Richardson’s equal-opportunity offense.

Naturally, top scorers Tiarra East (14.3 points per game) and Tarriyonna Gary (12.2) have had plenty of stellar outings — including East’s 33-point effort in the team’s previous matchup with semifinal foe Rice on Tuesday (7 p.m., ESPN+) — but they’re not the only ones on Temple’s roster who can provide scoring punch.

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Just look at the win over Charlotte.

Amaya Oliver, the grad transfer forward, became the seventh player to lead the Owls in scoring, with 12 points and 13 rebounds, largely in the first half of a 65-34 rout at Dickies Arena.

“I would say that you want to feed the hot hand,” said the 6-foot-1 Oliver, who came to Temple after stints at Southern Cal and Loyola Marymount. “If somebody’s knocking down shots, we’re going to try to get you the ball. So I think that has carried on throughout my career, and it’s worked, you know.”

Oliver, who is from Richmond, Calif., was averaging 5.0 points and 4.3 rebounds in 22.3 minutes per game through Monday. While she led Temple (20-10) in scoring, perhaps her biggest contributions were in the way she leveraged her size advantage and disrupted the 49ers’ offense.

Charlotte (11-21) shot 21% from the field Monday, including 17.1% in the first half. The Owls outscored the 49ers, 36-6, in the paint and outrebounded them, 56-36. They added 20 points off 18 turnovers.

“They are very versatile,” Richardson said of her squad. “Charlotte had some really athletic guards, and we knew that in order for us to be able to play with them, our posts would have to be able to be agile and switch on some screens, too, and they did just that.

“The good thing about our defense is its team defense, and the trust that they have in their teammates, if somebody gets a blow-by, they know they trust their teammate to have their back. They trusted each other on these switches [Monday], too.”

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Temple previously faced Rice, the No. 9 seed, on Feb. 28 and won, 83-63. Behind East’s 33 points, Gary had 18 points, Kaylah Turner added 11, and Oliver finished with seven points and eight rebounds.

Gary and East were members of last year’s squad, which fell to the Houston-based Owls, 60-57, in the AAC tournament semis. This year’s Rice squad entered Tuesday with a 16-16 record and knocked off top-seeded Texas-San Antonio, 62-58, on Monday to reach the semifinals.

Temple is an experienced squad. Whether that experience came on the West Coast or on North Broad, it has blended into a team that has won seven straight games and is striving to keep its postseason dream alive.

“As far as coming into our system, we play a fast-paced system, so of course the coaches are going to recruit players who fit this style of basketball,” said Gary, who followed Richardson from Towson ahead of the 2022-23 season.

“And we just know we have to play to our role, and I feel like that’s exactly what we did [against Charlotte],” Gary said. “Everybody played a good part in their role, just being a good teammate and just being who they are on the court.”