The Knights lost their first game of the season, falling to the No.24 Florida State Seminoles, 73-50, Monday night in Tallahassee.
FSU’s big men were just too much for the Knights to handle. Senior forward Bernard James, a 6’10’’ 26-year-old from Georgia, led the Seminoles with a game-high 18 points and 11 rebounds. Senior center Xavier Gibson added 12 points and seven rebounds for the Seminoles. The Seminoles racked up 38 points in the paint.
First-year Knight Tristan Spurlock led UCF with 12 points. Marcus Jordan returned to the court for UCF, but only scored 11 points on 5-of-16 shooting. Keith Clanton was limited in the second half due to foul trouble, and finished with 11 points and six rebounds.
“We knew that it was going to be a tough matchup for us,” Clanton said in a press release from UCFathletics.com. “We knew that we had to match their intensity and play hard. I don’t think that we played to our potential.”
The Knights had a tough night finding buckets from everywhere, shooting 18-of-59 from the floor, eight-of-20 from the line, and six-of-30 from three-point range. The Knights had trouble getting to the basket and settled for long-range, contested shots.
More than half of the shots for UCF came from long range. Since the departure of Isaac Sosa, the Knights have lacked a pure shooter to stretch the defense, and it showed tonight. It will be tough for the Knights to win when they shoot this many threes.
“Give credit to Florida State. They are a good team,” UCF head coach Donnie Jones said in a press release from UCFAthletics.com. “Tonight, we had to make some shots from the outside, and we didn’t do a good job of that. Give Florida State credit. Their length, their athleticism and size really bothered us.”
UCF kept the game close throughout the first half and went into halftime trailing 29-21. Jordan and Clanton each had eight points in the first half.
The Seminoles took control of the game after they went on a 15-5 run four minutes into the second half. The closest the Knights got within was 13 points with 11 minutes remaining in the game, but it was too much to overcome.
It was the first time since December of 1988 that the two teams faced each other. The Seminoles also won that meeting 97-64 at the Orange County Civic Center in Orlando.
These two teams can possibly meet again next week in the Battle for Atlantis in the Bahamas. The Knights will first have to focus on their next game against High Point University, which is set for 7 p.m. Friday night in Orlando.
