Knights kick off season against Panthers

The Winter Park Wildcats opened up their season with a late-blooming 21-9 win over Lake Nona on Friday night.

It wasn’t last year’s 41-35 slugfest, but the game still featured a back-and-forth offensive battle through the first half of the game as Lake Nona tried to keep pace. By halftime it was still only 14-7, as the Wildcats gradually crept away.

The Wildcats’ defense may have been the story of the game, allowing only 10 first downs and only one score. They intercepted Lake Nona’s Michael McFarlane once, holding him to a .486 completion percentage

Lake Nona’s Skeeter Smith, who led the game in tackles with 15, scored a safety when he sacked Winter Park into the the end zone in the second half of the game. But by then it was already too late. The Wildcats had their winning margin.

Already on a roll after winning their preseason kickoff and now their season opener, the Wildcats will travel to West Orange for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff Friday. The Warriors are 1-0 after destroying Foundation Academy 45-0 at the Battle of Winter Garden last Friday.

The Wildcats and Warriors haven’t played each other since the regional quarterfinal in 2013, when the Wildcats won a 38-35 nail-biter.

Edgewater

By the start of the second half the Eagles were already behind 28-0 against cross-the-street rival Bishop Moore in the Battle for College Park. Having already lost a tight game to Winter Park on Aug. 21, the Eagles were in for a rough night.

With five minutes left in the third quarter, the Hornets put up their final score to make it 35-0. Edgewater tried a late comeback, but with their first touchdown coming just two minutes before the end of the game on a field-spanning pass from backup quarterback Dalton Vaughn to receiver Buck Watkins, it was too little, too late as Edgewater fell 35-7.

The Hornets are on a three-game winning streak over the Eagles in their annual matchup. Before that, Edgewater had been 15-0 against the Hornets. For the Eagles, they picked a bad time to lose. They’ll be playing perennial state juggernaut Apopka this week. The Blue Darters demolished Ocoee 40-6 last Friday.

The game starts at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Apopka.

UCF

The Knights are ready for an unusual 6 p.m. Thursday start against Florida International as they look to leap out to a win in their defense of back-to-back American Athletic Conference championships.

“I’m anxious to see how they perform,” UCF Head Coach George O’Leary said in a press conference in the run-up to the game. “This team’s a new team, new chemistry, new leadership. They have to go out and prove themselves on the field.”

They’ve faced FIU before and, aside from an embarrassing 17-10 loss in a cursed 2011 in which the Knights lost six games by a touchdown or less, they’ve consistently dominated the Panthers.

The Panthers have been rebuilding since that unusually good season. In 2013 they finished 1-11 before gaining a crop of new players for 2014 and going 4-8 that year.

This season the Panthers are a run-heavy team with a sophomore quarterback in Alex McGough who went 11-for-25 for 56 yards the last time he played at the end of last season, stifled by a North Texas team that enters this season ranked No. 122 out of SBNation.com’s ranking of 128 FBS teams. Their unusually large offensive line is expected to open holes for the team’s running backs.

The Knights, who will field a younger team than last season, will kick off their season at the Bright House on Sept. 3, televised on CBS Sports Network.