Knights enter home stretch of the season

The Knights’ dream of avoiding a losing conference season ended on their home court in overtime on Sunday, when the Memphis Tigers took them down 75-65.

It was the end of a three-game winning streak for UCF’s men’s basketball team — the team’s longest since before Thanksgiving. The Knights had taken out USF, Houston and Tulane in quick succession, felling the Green Wave 69-55 in New Orleans before returning home.

That most recent win was one of only two conference wins the Knights have had against a team with a winning overall record this season. They still have yet to defeat a team that’s won more than half its conference games.

Brandon Goodwin pushed their game against Memphis into overtime thanks to a timely layup with only four seconds left in regulation. Goodwin would immediately steal the inbound ball and dish the ball out to B.J. Taylor to try to beat the clock, but the ball didn’t fall.

An overtime period blowout later, the Knights were left wondering what happened after they sank only 11 percent of their shots in extra time. Memphis (17-10, 9-5), having struggled to outpace UCF (12-14, 5-10) all day, sank 16 points to UCF’s six and walked away with a win.

Before that, the Knights hadn’t lost a basketball game since Feb. 7. That has helped dig them slowly out of having a losing overall record. They still have three games left to play on the regular season. They’ll have to win them all to emerge with a winning record. Even if they lost all three of their remaining games, they’d still improve on their dismal 2013-14 season, when they finished 13-18 overall and 4-14 in the conference — a free-fall compared to their 20-11, 9-7 record just a year prior.

They played Cincinnati (18-9, 9-5) Wednesday night at press time, facing one of the top teams in the conference in what, by the numbers, is the toughest of their final three games.

Lucky for the Knights, their final pair of games coming up this weekend and next Wednesday are against some of the American Athletic Conference’s worst teams.

At noon on Saturday they’ll host East Carolina (12-15, 5-9) for their final home game of the season. The last time the two teams met, on Feb. 7, the Pirates won handily in a 67-50 manhandling. After that, the Knights hit the road for their second installment of this season’s war on I-4, traveling to USF for a 7 p.m. March 4 tipoff.