Knights face rival USF after losing title shot

With clear sight of a bowl game on the horizon, the Knights left the field at halftime against Tulsa holding onto an unexpected 14-14 tie. The blowout that came next sunk the Knights’ chances of matching their 2014 record, eliminated their long-shot opportunity at an American Athletic Conference championship berth, and stole the wind from their sails heading into their final regular season game against a resurgent USF.

For UCF head coach Scott Frost, Saturday night’s was another frustrating game where the defense kept the Knights close, but the offense kept letting them down. The first two drives of the game were harbingers of what would come next. The Knights received the opening kickoff and turned it into a three-and-out. Three plays after the punt, UCF’s D.J. Killings intercepted a Tulsa pass and ran it back 28 yards for the first score of the game.

The Knights’ offense wouldn’t make it to the end zone until the fourth quarter.

“We had plenty of chances to go out there and make it a two-score game in the first quarter if we just put a drive together,” Frost said. “Not only did we not score, we couldn't stay on the field long enough to let our defense rest.”

Nine of UCF’s 16 offensive drives in the game ended in four plays or less. But despite that, the Knights stayed in the game, walking into the locker room at halftime tied 14-14 thanks to Killings’ interception return and Matthew Wright’s right foot.

The momentum shifted away from the Knights in an instant when a third quarter punt bounced off Chris Johnson’s facemask directly into the hands of Tulsa’s Cristian Williams. Tulsa’s go-ahead score came four plays later; their second touchdown of the game to immediately follow a UCF fumble. Tulsa would never relinquish that lead, eventually expanding it to 35-14 before UCF found the end zone one more time.

The Knights’ offense, despite rare scoring, found their footing after they went within three minutes of the end of the first half having only gained 45 total yards on the field. They would poke larger holes in the Tulsa defense in the second half, en route to 233 in the air and 88 on the ground. Tulsa, despite all of the efforts of the FBS’s No. 26 total defense to stop them, gained 474 yards total, 370 of them coming on the ground alone.

For the Knights, coming up, it’s one last regular season game before the broad field of FBS teams with at least six wins find out where they’ll go bowling over the holiday season. For the Knights, it couldn’t get bigger than USF.

The UCF-USF on-again, off-again rivalry has haunted the Knights far more than the occasionally catastrophic, intermittently dominant Bulls. The game, which the teams are rebranding as their first matchup in the “War on I-4 Rivalry Series,” already has a deep history in a short period of time.

The Bulls are up 5-2 on the Knights in the series overall. The last time the teams met in Tampa was 2014, when the Knights blasted the Bulls 16-0. Quarterback Justin Holman went 20-for-29 for 150 yards in that game. In 2015, USF came to Orlando and dominated in a 44-3 rout that saw Holman never reach the end zone. Frost has left it in question whether Holman will appear at all during his final regular season game in a UCF uniform. He didn’t leave the bench during their last home game last week, with McKenzie Milton doing all the quarterbacking.

The Bulls are 9-2 in one of the best seasons they’ve played in years, though they barely escaped a middling SMU team, trading interceptions and punts for the last nine minutes of a one-possession game that finished 35-27 Saturday night. They’re also the No. 7 team in the FBS in total offense. Thankfully for the Knights, the team with one of the nation’s best offenses also has one of the worst defenses, giving up an average of 489.4 yards per game.

The game kicks off at noon Saturday, broadcast on CBS Sports Network and 96.9 The Game.

Winter Park football

The Wildcats edged a game closer to the championship with a 35-21 win over Timber Creek in the Florida High School Athletic Association regional semifinal last Friday.

Quarterback Cameron LeGree found his groove with 208 yards passing, going 13-for-15 in the process. Dre Williams was his favorite target picking up 102 yards on four receptions. LeGree did most of the ball carrying on the ground too, gaining 75 yards and grabbing two touchdowns in the process.

On defense and special teams things got interesting. Jordan Manning went 39 yards on an interception. Cullen Honohan and Jordan Pouncey both snagged passes out of the air, with Pouncey adding a 42-yard punt return for good measure.

Now they face a Seminole team on a historic 11-0 run under head coach Don Stark, having edged Lake Brantley 48-41 in a slugfest thriller of a game that saw 38 points scored in the fourth quarter alone.

The Wildcats, for their third straight playoff game, will play host. It kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Friday.