UCF Knights look to salvage sinking basketball season

After starting their season with one of the team’s longest season-opening winning streaks of all time, the UCF Knights are now in the middle of their worst losing streak since the men’s basketball team joined the American Athletic Conference.

That includes an unlikely 67-50 bamboozling blowout Feb. 7 at the hands of East Carolina, which has one of the worst overall records in the conference. The Pirates are now one game closer to a winning record, thanks to the Knights.

The score was tied with six minutes left in the first half of the game. The Knights, despite typically poor shooting, had kept up with the Pirates and actually held the lead multiple times in the first period.

The second half escalated from a moderate Pirates lead into a blowout that at one point stretched 21 points wide. The Knights’ penultimate shot to fall was a slam-dunk by starting guard Brandon Goodwin that brought the score within a marginally less-gaping 18 points. The Knights would get no closer to the Pirates before the clock struck zero.

Three Knights would crack double-digit scores, and three more would snag at least seven rebounds each on the night. Staphon Blair led the team with 12 points and seven rebounds. He also sank 67 percent of his shots, putting him in rare company alongside Goodwin as the only two Knights to find the net more than twice for every five times they tossed up the ball.

The Knights’ loss dropped them below East Carolina. But with the AAC currently featuring three teams that have won 20 percent or less of their conference games, they’re still not at the bottom, with their six-game free-fall cushioned by Houston (9-13, 1-9) and USF (7-17, 1-10).

“Our kids have to keep battling,” head coach Donnie Jones told UCFKnights.com after the game. “We just can’t beat ourselves up. We have to regroup and get ready.”

The Knights faced off against I-4 rival USF on Wednesday night at press time, hoping to start what will need to be an undefeated conference run for the rest of the season if they hope to escape the season without a losing record.

Following their showdown with the Bulls, the Knights face the only other team in the conference with a worse record, Houston, and for the second game in a row the Knights will do it with the benefit of their home court.

Worse news for the Knights: Houston, after losing their first eight conference games, turned around and won two straight games before falling to AAC-leader Tulsa. That brief winning streak included a 70-68 upset shocker over UConn, making the Huskies the second team with a winning record that Houston has beaten all season.

Just like with USF, Houston’s worse record still doesn’t place them worse overall on the national Sagarin ratings system than the Knights, at No. 249 out of 351 college teams, versus Houston’s No. 247. So far on the season the Knights have faced a substantially tougher strength of schedule than either of their bottom-dwelling AAC compatriots.

Incidentally, on that ratings ranking the Knights are the second worst team in Florida, behind North Florida, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida Atlantic, and USF. The only Florida team ranked worse is Florida A&M, which is one of two teams left in the country that haven’t won a game yet.

The Knights tip off against Houston at 2 p.m. Sunday at the CFE arena.