The UCF Knights found their energy in the second half behind a press and came back before blowing a lead in a wild overtime victory.
It probably did not need to take luck considering how poor Bethune-Cookman is ranked — No. 338 according to KenPom in college basketball — or maybe it did.
Then again, the UCF Knights allowed the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats to make the game frenetic and hurried. They completely eliminated the necessity and ability for UCF to play its big centers Tacko Fall and Justin McBride (a combined 10 minutes). The constant attack and barrage had Donnie Jones employing a press to little success, then a ton of success and then little success again.
Eventually, in a game sent to overtime on a last-second 3-point heave from guard Jordan Potts, it took a bounce and a kick to get the Knights over the top.
With Potts seeming doing his best Stephen Curry impersonation with extreme step backs and pull-up jumpers on his way to 35 points and nine assists on 11-for-23 shooting and 7-for-12 shooting from beyond the arc, Daiquan Walker was the one who had to answer.
Walker hit both of his 3-pointers in the overtime period including one that bounced high off the front iron and landed safely in the cylinder and through the net to give the Knights a five-point lead with just more than a minute to play.
The Wildcats’ frenetic magic ran out as Potts fouled out, allowing the Knights to hold on for a 101-96 win in overtime at CFE Arena.
“Just being a senior, a lot is expected of me,” Walker said. “Coming down in crunch time, I always want to take the big shots. I always want the ball in my hands. In the situation where they were in the bonus, I knew if I attacked, I was either going to get fouled or I was going to get a layup or I was going to facilitate and make a play for my teammates.”
Walker scored 21 points and dished out 10 assists in the game. He had 10 points in the overtime leader as UCF needed something to snap them out of the trauma of losing a lead late in regulation.
He was aggressive as were the Knights in getting to the foul line in the second half particularly, where they took 27 of their 43 free throw attempts. UCF needed every one of those moments and points.
The Knights had to erase an 18-point deficit late in the first half, going on a 20-4 run in the first three minutes to take the lead and then going on another run to build as much as a 17-point lead in the game. It was a roller coaster throughout as the Knights relied heavily on their press to get back into things.
“I talked about it at halftime, we are either going to win this game or we are going to get blown out by 20-plus,” Jones said. “We are going to press, we are going to trap everything.
“They responded. They got challenged. Momentum shifted, we made some plays, they got some steals. We could never get momentum in the first half. They jumped on us and got us down.”
The press did work to wake UCF up. There was a stretch early in the second half where Bethune-Cookman could not break the press and UCF was able to take BCU out of its ball-control offense.
The Wildcats started missing 3-pointers in this moment and the Knights controlled the game, got out in transition and allowed their athleticism to take control.
UCF was certainly determined to be more aggressive and get to the rim. The Knights’ 43 free throw attempts was plenty sign of that. UCF made 36 of those attempts with Daiquan Walker making 9 of 10 and Adonys Henriquez scoring 7 of 10.
Jones had Shaheed Davis playing the five with Bethune-Cookman forcing UCF to go small and told Davis to play big that way. He scored 20 points on 8-for-12 shooting, throwing in a few monstrous jams for good measure.
The Knights simply could not play the more immobile Fall or McBride with their need to press in the second half and the Wildcats’ ability to go super small. They were hitting shots over the zone early on and getting the two bigs involved in pick and rolls on the perimeter. UCF could not rely on either to play defense down by so much.
The Knights going small helped them build their run and their lead. Bethune-Cookman had its run too. The 3-pointers that fell early on in the game and began falling again in the second half and the shootout was on.
Walker said he suspected the team might come out flat after some poor practices after the Detroit game. Coach Donnie Jones said the team seemed to be hanging their heads feeling sorry for themselves for the loss at Detroit on Saturday.
That needed to stop quickly as Bethune-Cookman took it to UCF, taking the laid-back 2-3 zone defense Jones runs with Fall in the game and torching it — for 9-for-13 shooting and three 3-pointers in the first nine minutes of the game.
“It was just a game of runs,” Davis said. “We have to find a way to not blow leads and keep our energy at a high level.”
UCF came out determined to change things in the second and it did. The shots started falling as the Knights made 65.2 percent of their shots in the second half. They hit five of nine 3-pointers.
In overtime, the Knights made five of seven shots, continuing the strong offensive play.
Still they needed big plays.
Potts was making shots, impossible shots. The Knights were sometimes a bit too lax with him and Mario Moody before Moody fouled out, giving them the space to fire from beyond the arc or take the space and attack.
It would have been easy to collapse again after all the mental errors toward the end of the game — an ill-advised shot early in the shot clock with less than a minute to play from Shaheed Davis, missed free throws from Adonys Henriquez and Daiquan Walker — but Walker and the Knights made the plays at the end.
They buckled down on defense and the Wildcats ran out of magic. When Potts fouled out with about a minute to play, maybe UCF could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“I felt like we got the momentum once we came out,” Walker said. “The press was working for us. I don’t want to say we got our confidence back, but we got our confidence back and imposed our will. It was a great team effort. Our bench, we stepped up today. It was a great effort as a team.”
