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Knight Shift: UCF’s Valiant Effort Not Enough to Beat No. 6 Houston

Turnovers and cold shooting down the stretch derailed the upset-minded Knights

By Eric Lopez, AndrewGluchov, and Brian Murphy_UCF
NCAA Basketball: Houston at Central Florida
UCF guard Brandon Mahan scored 13 points in Saturday’s loss to the Cougars. He came in averaging 22.5 points per game.
Mike Watters-USA TODAY Sports

You can’t say the UCF Knights necessarily passed what will be one of their toughest in-conference tests of the season on Saturday. Head coach Johnny Dawkins certainly won’t.

But UCF didn’t fail this test either.

The Knights battled hard against the undefeated and sixth-ranked Houston Cougars. They out-rebounded one of the best rebounding teams in the sport. They held Houston to 36 percent shooting, 28 percent from 3-point range, and trailed by just four points with two minutes to play.

But a late, elongated scoring drought and too many lost possessions ultimately left the Knights on the short end of a 63-54 game.

In this latest version of Knight Shift, Eric Lopez, Andrew Gluchov and Brian Murphy recap this network television showdown, what went wrong, what went right and why UCF fans should come away from this defeat still feeling pretty positive about their men’s basketball team.

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You can also listen to what head coach Johnny Dawkins and senior guard Darius Perry had to say during the post-game press conference in the clips below:

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