Taylor, Williams lead UCF Knights on tear

The Knights have been on a tear as they’ve ventured deeper into American Athletic Conference play this week, with some of their toughest games right on the horizon.

Saturday night they laid a dominating 77-70 win on Houston at CFE Arena, thanks to a resurgent B.J. Taylor, who shot 20 points. The Knights never trailed in the game after opening up with a 10-0 scoring run. The scrappy Cougars tried to make up for it by outscoring the Knights on turnovers 25-15 and outscoring on fast breaks by 6-0, but the Knights ran away with it anyway, hammering home 60.87 percent of their shots in the second half.

Tuesday the Knights handed out a beating on USF and Matt Williams set a scoring record with a runaway 86-64 win that was already opened 12-points wide by halftime.

Williams played like a man with a vendetta, scoring a career-high 38 points and setting a conference record with 11 three-pointers in the game. No Knight had come close to that many points since Jermaine Taylor shot 45 in 2009. Williams is now No. 4 in the nation in three pointers made, with 70 on the year.

After holding yet another opponent to such a low score, the Knights are now ranked No. 3 in Division 1 basketball in scoring defense, allowing an average of just 58.6 points per game.

Coming up for the Knights, it’s two of their toughest challenges yet as they travel to Memphis (13-5, 3-2) for a 4 p.m. tipoff Sunday, then return home to host SMU (15-4, 5-1) at 6 p.m. next Wednesday.

UCF women’s basketball

The lady Knights began slowly digging their way out of a conference hole with a 62-48 win over Houston last Wednesday, bringing their record up to 11-6 and 1-3 in the conference. Zykira Lewis led in that effort with 17 points, trailed by a trio of Knights with 11 points each.

Taking a week between games, the Knights played again at press time Wednesday, this time against ECU. They’ll host Tulsa (5-13, 1-4) at 1 p.m. Saturday.