UCF Knights prepare for tough Tulsa

Tulsa may seem like an easy match for UCF’s football team on paper, with a 2-7 overall record this season, but the Knights have a bad history they’ll contend with when they meet this week.

Tulsa’s only victory since the first week of the season has come against SMU, which hasn’t won a football game this season. The Golden Hurricane also rarely loses to the Knights (5-3, 3-1).

This season, Tulsa has struggled, with a long, seven-game losing streak in the middle of the season bookended by wins.

What the Hurricane has done in the last four games raises some eyebrows, with the team racking up more than 400 yards of offense in each of those matchups, three of which ended with losses. The Knights have only gained more than 400 yards in two games this season, but those are also their two most recent games, part of a rising trend of yardage by the Knights since their first two games that didn’t hit 300 yards.

The Knights’ defense will need to be its usual self to stop Tulsa. Rising to the occasion hasn’t been a problem for UCF’s historically strong squad. As of this week, the Knights’ defense is in the top-15 in the nation in stopping opposing teams’ drives before they reach a first down. Against Bethune-Cookman and Temple this year, the Knights held their opponent to three-and-out on more than half of their drives in the game, forcing punts immediately and giving the Knights a better chance to double down on scoring.

And that’s not the only category the Knights are currently among the best in the nation in. They’re in the top-25 football teams in rushing defense, pass defense, total defense, scoring defense and reducing teams’ pass efficiency. There are only six teams in the nation that are in the top-25 in all those categories.

On offense, the Knights will be looking to exorcise some demons from their disastrous loss to UConn in their last game. In that upset loss UCF quarterback Justin Holman threw four interceptions, with two of the Knights’ turnovers leading to the Huskies’ winning margin in the game. J.J. Worton’s career game with 178 yards worth of receptions and Will Stanback’s 145 yards on the ground weren’t enough to overcome UConn in a game plagued by mistakes.

“You have to put teams away when you’re moving … if you don’t then suddenly you’re in a ballgame,” UCF head coach George O’Leary said about mistakes in the UConn game.

The Knights know a thing or two about letting seemingly easy games get too close for comfort. Last season against conference teams with losing records the Knights would escape from only two by a margin of more than a touchdown.

One of the teams they obliterated in 2013, UConn, came back to haunt them this season in a scary 37-29 upset the day after Halloween this year. But the Knights have a habit of bouncing back from losses. They’re 7-1 in their last eight games after a loss. The Knights’ only losing streak in the past two seasons came at the start of this season. That streak broke another one; after narrowly losing to South Carolina early in the 2013 season, the Knights never lost again, posting the team’s all-time best record, and doing it against the toughest conference they’d ever faced.

They’ll need to keep that record going to beat the odds against Tulsa, which has a 5-2 all-time record against the Knights. They’ll play each other at the Bright House, which evens the odds for the Knights, who are 2-2 all-time against the Hurricane at home.

The game kicks off at 8 p.m. Friday in the Bright House.