ORLANDO, Fla. – Despite a herculean effort from Justin McBride, the Shaq Goodwin-led Memphis Tigers handed the UCF Knights’ their first conference loss at home on Tuesday.
“Shaq was playing really well tonight, he’s a very good player and we had a hard time stopping him,” UCF Head Coach Donnie Jones said. “We scored enough to win the game tonight. Shot 52 percent from the field, but it wasn’t enough with the way those guys had some very good individual performances.”
Memphis’ senior forward Shaq Goodwin seized control of the game early on, pushing the Tigers out in front with a career-high 35 points to go with 9 rebounds and 6 assists. The Knights had a hard time finding a defensive matchup that worked against the athletic forward between Tacko Fall, Justin McBride and Staphon Blair.
Imposing their will inside, the Tigers began to find holes in the Knights atypically stingy 2-3 zone and wound up shooting a blistering 52.2 percent from long range in the game.
“I think we were trying to stop inside, Shaq was really getting it going you know,” redshirt sophomore AJ Davis said. “So we tried to contain him on the inside and he did a good job of kicking it out and they knocked down some shots.”
However, in the second half, UCF came out firing on all cylinders and pushed their 14-point deficit to just 6 points within the first couple minutes.
Justin McBride was integral to the Knight’s comeback effort against Memphis as he led the team with 20 points in the game, but it wasn’t enough to reel in the sharpshooting Tigers. The junior center played the majority of the second half as freshman Tacko Fall had a hard time stopping Shaq Goodwin.
“Come out the second half and you just sell out, you give everything that you have,” McBride said. “We did that in the beginning, but our mistakes kind of caught up with us. So we eliminated those and came out in the second half and hit some shots and we went inside and things were flowing.”
Tigers’ guards Ricky Tarrant Jr. and Avery Woodson combined for 9 of Memphis’ 12 3-pointers made in the game. Heading into the game, the Tigers were shooting just 30.2 percent from the 3-point line on the season, but their lights out performance against the Knights clearly made the difference on Tuesday night.
“I felt Shaq’s energy really opened things up and I felt Avery Woodson hitting some three’s and Ricky Tarrant hitting a couple of those threes allowed Shaq to open up more in the center as well too,” Memphis Head Coach Josh Pastner said.
The Knights will look to bounce back this coming Sunday at home against the UConn Huskies who boast a 14-5 record thus far this season and are currently riding a 3-game win streak.
