The UCF Knights men’s basketball team extended their win streak to five games after beating Valparaiso 90-62 on Sunday.
Tristan Spurlock led the Knights with 22 points and Brandon Goodwin provided a spark off of the bench, scoring 12 points as the Knights won the Jackson Hewitt Holiday Classic.
Sharp-shooting was the key to the Knight’s success, shooting 51.7 percent for the game, including an impressive 11 of 19 from behind the 3-point arc.
“We made a lot of shots and when you do that, the rest of the game comes pretty easy, but we also played really good defense. I thought everybody who played contributed something and you’d like to see that every night,” Head Coach Donnie Jones told UCFSports.com.
The Knights lost to Valparaiso earlier this season 85-70, but UCF looked like an entirely new team this time around, taking a 43-20 lead at halftime.
“We tried making adjustments in that first half to energize our guys, but we couldn’t find anything that worked. Give UCF credit for a lot of that. They made a lot of good adjustments from the first time we played them. They were really good defensively. They made us miss and then it got contagious. We couldn’t hit anything,” Valparaiso Head Coach Bryce Drew told UCFSports.com.
The Knights have a few days off before they host the No.6 school and defending national champion Louisville Cardinals on New Year’s Eve.
