Winter Park Wildcats head to state final four

Winter Park

Malik Farley’s 16 points powered Winter Park (20-10) past Seminole in a 63-56 win on their home court on Friday. The Wildcats’ deep run into the state tournament has seen nail-biters and blowouts along the way.

After narrowly escaping against Timber Creek in the regional semifinal, the more decisive win propels the Wildcats into a showdown against Coral Springs (20-7). Coral Springs escaped from Wellington with an 85-79 win that went into double overtime.

That game tips off at 4 p.m. Friday at the Lakeland Center. If the Wildcats pull off a win, they’ll get a shot at redeeming their state championship mantle they lost last year. The Wildcats have won three state championships since 2010.

Edgewater

The lady Eagles made it all the way to Lakeland before they finally met their match, falling 43-37 to Oakland Park’s Northeast on Friday night. The state semifinal loss ended a deep playoff run for the Eagles, just a game away from the championship.

And for much of the game, it was looking like Edgewater was headed to the state championship. At one point, the Eagles led by 11 points before a fourth quarter collapse that ended their season in the span of 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes saw no Eagles points added to the board, as Northeast caught up and passed them. They cruised to victory from there.

For the Eagles (21-6), the season ended that night.

UCF

Five straight losses have sent the Knights into a tailspin as they close in on the final week of regular season basketball. The Knights, formerly among the American Athletic Conference’s best early in the season, are now 11-14 overall and 5-9 in the conference, having lost eight of their last nine games.

That includes a sputtering comeback that fell apart at home against Tulsa on Sunday afternoon, the Knights eventually falling 75-67.

The Knights had been down by 14 points when they came out of the locker room after halftime. With 4 minutes left in the game, they had whittled that deficit down to just a three-pointer before they finally lost momentum. By then the Knights had nearly made up for a dismal first half that saw them make just 25.8 percent of their shots and only 8.3 percent from the three-point land.

Chance McSpadden tried his best to buoy the Knights on his own, landing their last two shots and letting fly a three point attempt in the final seconds. But by then the gap had expanded too wide to close. McSpadden would land 12 points and grab five rebounds. Matt Williams led the team in scoring with 16 points.

The Knights played Houston at Wednesday night at press time. They travel to conference leader Temple (17-9, 11-3) for a noon tipoff Saturday before returning home to host Tulane (10-17, 3-11) at 7 p.m. next Wednesday.

Rollins

This is it for the Tars. They’ve weathered a tough Sunshine State Conference season to make their way into their final regular season game of the year. After that, it’s the SSC tournament next week.

The Tars (19-7, 11-4) will have one of the highest seeds in the SSC tournament when it arrives next week, pending the result of their game they played against Saint Leo on Wednesday night at press time.

The Tars will wrap up the regular season on the far end of a road trip to West Palm Beach, when they face Palm Beach Atlantic (12-12). For both teams, in their final game, they’ll be looking to finish on a high note.

The last time the two teams met, the Tars lost 88-86 on a three-pointer in the last 16 seconds of the game that killed a Rollins comeback. The loss came despite the Tars winning the turnover and steal battles by broad margins.