UCF inches closer to regular-season title
UCF won its eighth straight game Saturday in dominant fashion, romping 68-31 over Temple on the road.
With the victory, the Knights moved closer to earning the No. 1 seed in the American Athletic Conference tournament and their first regular-season title in 16 years.
The Knights (20-3, 12-1 AAC) put on a defensive clinic, holding Temple (12-11, 7-5 AAC) to 23% shooting from the field while forcing 21 turnovers. The Owls’ top scorer Mia Davis, who led the AAC with 18.9 points per game, scored only one point against UCF.
“Everybody knows she make their team go, so our concentration started with her,” UCF coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said. “It was a team effort trying to keep the ball out of her hands.”
The defensive effort marked the third straight game UCF has limited opponents to 35 points or fewer.
Three UCF players finished in double figures, including senior forward Brittney Smith, who led the team with 14 points off the bench.
Junior guard Alisha Lewis shot 4 of 5 from beyond the arc to finish with 12 points. She also dished out six assists and grabbed five rebounds.
Senior forward Masseny Kaba scored 11 points and had six rebounds, while Diamond Battles added nine points.
Abrahamson-Henderson was pleased with how her team shared the ball to finish with 21 assists.
“That’s been our focus all year long: to have multiple scorers,” she said. “We can’t have one or two players [score], and I think they’ve really taken that to heart.”
Although the win over Temple gives UCF tiebreakers over each of the top three teams below the Knights in the AAC standings, there are some postponed games that could still be played.
The Knights were scheduled to play SMU on Jan. 19 in Dallas, but the game was postponed due to health and safety protocols within the SMU program. Additionally, a Jan. 2 game between South Florida and Memphis was postponed due to health and safety protocols within the Bulls program.
The conference hasn’t decided whether these two games will be made up. Technically, UCF needs only one more win to clinch the top seed in the tournament and the regular-season championship.
That win could come next Saturday inside Addition Financial Arena, when UCF hosts Cincinnati at 2 p.m.
A regular-season title would be the first for UCF in the AAC and the program’s first regular-season championship since 2005, when the Knights were a member of the ASUN conference.