The Knights (4-2) cruised to a 28 point victory over the Florida Tech Panthers (3-1) Saturday night, coming away with a 90-62 win after dropping two consecutive games.
Freshman guard Matt Williams led UCF with 21 points in a mere 13 minutes off the bench, hitting seven of nine three point field goal attempts and making a statement with his season debut.
Williams had missed the first five games of the season with a burst appendix, and more than anything seemed ecstatic to finally get on the court.
“With all the trials and tribulations I’ve been through, it just feels good to finally be able to play again,” the point guard commented after the game. “I wasn’t expecting to play this much…. I knew I could hit my jumper, because every night me and Daiquan, we go at it in the gym.”
Oh, that’s right. In addition to Williams’ mind boggling accuracy from out deep, fellow freshman Daiquan Walker was nearly as impressive, nailing five of his six three point attempts for a solid fifteen point game.
Coach Jones paid tribute to the contributions of his greenest players when he proclaimed that “He and Matt Williams are the backcourt of the future, and those guys need minutes here to grow up.”
The game was placed firmly in the Knights’ possession in the second half, when UCF came out with an initial 38-29 lead. The Knights’ shooters made 63% of all shots in the final half of the game, while keeping the Panthers to a lowly 34% shooting rate throughout the entire game.
Jones acknowledged the second half increase in pace, and credited the change in game speed to simply executing the game plan on the court.
“Obviously, we came out and played the way we need to play,” he relayed. “We needed to make some shots, and we were fortunate tonight, the shots went down for us.”
Like a well-oiled machine, the offense was almost flawless in the second half, putting up 52 points and only turning the ball over eight times.
With all of the attention on the two freshman guards career nights, both Keith Clanton and Kasey Wilson put up quiet double-doubles.
Wilson put up sixteen points of his own points and eleven rebounds while blocking two shots in a versatile outing against the Panthers.
“I think Kasey is a mis-match four man who can step out and shoot threes now, and his handles gotten better, he’s rebounding much better…. and he’s another scoring threat I think can be very good in this style,” Coach Jones assessed.
The Knights have an eleven day rest before their next game, which will be played at home against Bethune Cookman on December 12 at 7 P.M.
