For the UCF men’s basketball team, it has not been too tough to find the words for what went wrong when the calendar flipped to 2016. Most game recaps during the second half of the season were rife with rhetoric regarding a lack of shooting, discipline and an overall identity that any good team needs.
Beginning on Jan. 26 against Tulsa, UCF went on to lose 12 of its next 14 games to end the season, and it all culminated in a 65-63 loss to the Tulane Green Wave in the opening round of the American Conference tournament on Thursday night at the hometown Amway Center.
A disappointing loss that ended a frustrating season for the Knights and an era too.
Orlando Sports Daily can confirm Donnie Jones has been fired as UCF men’s basketball coach as has been reported by several outlets.
The disappointment and frustration that had built up all season and bubbled over in the Knights’ tournament game against the Green Wave caught up to him.
UCF’s problems on Thursday night were not much different than the rest of the season. They did not shoot the ball well and they committed far too many turnovers.
“Unfortunately, we got down in the first half, didn’t think we had a great start to the game,” head coach Donnie Jones said. “I thought our guys were really just a little too hyped.”
UCF had 21 turnovers in its final game of the season against Tulane, including 13 in the first half. Aside from spurts during the second half from sophomores Adonys Henriquez and A.J. Davis, the Knights could not buy a basket in the first half, shooting 25 percent from the field in the opening 20 minutes of play, and recovering to shoot just 35.8 percent for the game, including 7 for 26 from beyond the arc.
Davis stuffed the stat sheet with 20 points, nine rebounds and four assists, but he also committed five turnovers, including a huge one with 12 seconds left and the team down by three points at 64-61.
Davis was inbounding the basketball and tried to find Matt Williams, but the ball slipped away, trickling into the hands of Tulane and ending the season in a truly brutal fashion. The Knights did not even get a shot up with a chance to tie the game and save their season.
Davis will no doubt get a lot of flack for how he played down the stretch, but he showed up in this game, and this underwhelming performance does not have as much to do with him as it does the way the entire team struggled to protect the ball and finish the game.
“I think that our shot selection in the last four to five minutes, we just took some shots that we shouldn’t have rushed or whatever,” Henriquez said. “I’m just really proud of our team and really proud of these seniors for everything they gave to us.”
Henriquez was quiet in the first half, but came out in the second half with aggressiveness. He scored seven points in the first three minutes of the half and finished with 10 for the night.
For the Knights, the season and this game was truly a summation of all of the things they had done wrong in the past two months. And the number one problem overall shined the brightest.
UCF basketball does not have an identity.
For the first few minutes, UCF seemed content to deliver the ball into the post to Tacko Fall. It did not work. He then was substituted for Justin McBride, but he only played three minutes.
The strategy UCF no doubt planned to accomplish was abandoned within the first few minutes of the game, which resulted in an intense drought in which the Knights failed to make a field goal from 10:10 left in the half to 1:43 a span of almost nine minutes. Tulane took control of the game at that point and UCF was fighting uphill the rest of the way.
The Knights did not have players that could shoot, aside from Matt Williams and Adonys Henriquez, and, as a result, relying on contested perimeter jump shots failed them.
UCF did outbound Tulane 47-34 with 16 offensive rebounds, but the team did not convert its chances.
With those 16 offensive boards, UCF only had 15 second-chance points, which accounts for less than a point per offensive rebound, a ratio UCF could have improved on and truthfully, even one or two more layups at the basket would have resulted in a victory and turned the tide.
“Obviously we had our opportunities,” Jones said. “We had some looks, we just didn’t make them early on.”
That said, hindsight is 20/20. And looking back on a season, it is easy to get caught up in what went wrong, but there were some bright spots for the Knights.
Tacko Fall presented himself as a force on both sides of the ball when healthy and when getting the appropriate minutes. A.J. Davis proved himself to be a versatile player and good leader. Adonys Henriquez showed an ability to be productive in spurts, but needs an increase in usage. Justin McBride, Matt Williams and Daiquan Walker (the only senior in that group) all had very solid nights for UCF at different times this season.
“I think that I learned a lot this season,” freshman center Tacko Fall said. “I got to thank my teammates and my coaches for staying on me all the time, everybody, starting from the seniors.”
For now though, UCF will go back to the drawing board with a young core that is gaining experience in an attempt to get better and establish some forward momentum for a program that desperately needs it.
“We’ll be here again next year and have a chance to do something about it,” Jones said.
They will do that though with a new coach and a new direction. It is unclear whether that will be enough.
[…] Even with a young squad, the Knights never showed much improvement. And that culminated in Thursday’s American Conference Tournament loss to Tulane. […]