Knights confident despite adversity
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Taj McGowan appeared to have scored UCF’s first touchdown Saturday at Maryland late in the second quarter.
The scoring play, however, was overturned, and the touchdown — an 8-yard run to cap an eight-play, 55-yard UCF drive for its first points of the game — was taken off the board.
But this isn’t the 2016 UCF football team. This isn’t the same Knights who had trouble dealing with on-field adversity last season.
“The crazy thing is, after they reviewed it and everything, I was just like, ‘ We’re gonna do it again,’ ” said McGowan, a junior running back who would punch the ball across the goal line from the 1-yard line on the next play to give UCF a 7-3 lead. “We can run it 10 times and we’re going to get in 10 times in a row. That’s how we felt.”
It was a mentality UCF carried throughout its 38-10 victory at Maryland, marking only the second time in school history the Knights have defeated a Big Ten opponent. In 2013, UCF won 34-31 at Penn State.
Last season, adversity was often met with more mistakes.
It happened against Maryland when UCF had a 14-10 third-quarter lead it squandered due to miscues. The Knights ended up losing 30-24 to the Terps in double overtime at home last season.
It happened again at home versus Temple when UCF rolled out to a 25-7 second-quarter lead only to not score again during a 26-25 loss to the Owls.
And then there was Houston when UCF held a commanding 24-3 thirdquarter lead on the road but watched it evaporate amid turnovers and confusion as the Cougars rallied to earn a 31-24 win.
So as the Knights were sailing along against Maryland on Saturday, in the back of the minds of many UCF supporters there was likely still a bit of uneasiness.
That, however, was never on the minds of this year’s Knights.
“We know how to handle adversity,” McGowan said. “So we didn’t panic if a drive didn’t go well. … We just got to the sideline and said, ‘We’re gonna get them next time.’ ”
McGowan said part of last year’s tendency to panic was a bit of a hangover effect left from the year before when UCF went winless in 12 games, leading to coach George O’Leary retiring during the season and the Knights bringing in Scott Frost as the new coach.
“So a lot of the time [last year] when something happened, we were like, ‘Oh, snap, here it goes again.’ Our mind wasn’t really how we wanted it to be,” McGowan said. “But through this offseason and the bond we have, especially during the hurricane when we got a good chance to bond with each other … any adversity we face, it’s easy to recover from it.”
There were numerous times when the Knights could have bent and even broken Saturday.
When Maryland finally scored its first touchdown to pull within 21-10 late in the third quarter, the Knights could have gotten that uneasy feeling once again. Not this time. UCF went right to work. Quarterback McKenzie Milton hit tight end Jordan Akins twice on passes for more than 20 yards and Tre’Quan Smith also had a big catch. The Knights would put more points on the board with a Matthew Wright field goal to make it 24-10 early in the fourth quarter.
On the next series, the UCF defense, which was tremendous all day, stepped up again and forced a Maryland punt. UCF’s offense kept stepping on the gas and after Otis Anderson reeled off a 44-yard run, Milton hit Adrian Killins with a 15-yard touchdown pass to make it 31-10 and leave little doubt which team was in control.
“I think we took a big step [Saturday] in the sense that we kept the pedal to the metal and kept keeping on,” Milton said.