ORLANDO, Fla. — It has been a devastating week for the Knights as they lost two of their most prominent leaders.
Starting quarterback Justin Holman will be out for 2-4 weeks with hand injury and starting center Joey Grant will be out for the rest of the season with a shoulder injury.
“Holman will be out 2-4 weeks with a hand injury,” said Head Coach George O’leary at Monday afternoon’s press conference.
“Joey Grant will be out for the year with his shoulder…he aggravated his shoulder again,” added O’leary.
Those are two devastating blows for the Knights after starting the season with an 0-2 record.
However, The Knights are still optimistic about the 2015 season. After starting last season with an 0-2 record, the Knights went on to win the American Athletic Conference. They have been in this predicament before.
“We staying positive, were just going to keep working hard and get this thing rolling,” said red-shirt senior linebacker Dominic Spencer at Monday afternoon’s press conference.
The Knights will have to rely on red-shirt freshman Bo Schneider to be successful in the upcoming weeks. After coming into game in the second series of last Saturday’s game at Stanford, Schneider went 7 of 19 pass attempts for 49 yards before being taking out of the game for true freshman Tyler Harris in the fourth quarter. Although Harris had more passing yards than Schneider and threw a touchdown, Schneider is expected to start at quarterback for the Knights until Holman is healthy.
“Things would of turned out better for Bo if weren’t for the dropped passes… he is the top guy, the next guy will follow,” said O’leary.
The Knights are also expected to feature true-freshman running back Taj McGowan going forward. McGowan ran for 67 yards on 20 attempts against Stanford.
“Taj did some nice things,” said O’leary. “He is a quick kid. He needs to keep getting better and better and I think he will.”
“He ran well, we ran the ball better,” added O’leary.
The Knights’ o-line is staring to play better and they should begin to gel with each other. Junior Jason Rae is expected to take over the stating center position for the rest of the season. Rae got the start against Stanford as Grant was unable to play with the shoulder injury.
“The interior of the o-line needs to play better,” said O’leary.
UCF will have to rely on their young players for the rest of the season. Coach O’leary has a tough task ahead of him, but he has been coaching for 47 years.
“We have to do a better job of coaching them,” said O’leary.
Photo Credit: Nick Russett
