UCF guard B.J. Taylor
leads the Knights in defeating Houston 77-70 for a victory at home.
UCF 7-foot-6 center Tacko Fall temporarily broke the scoreboard with an alley-oop dunk and guard B.J. Taylor broke the game open for the Knights, who outlasted Houston 77-70 at home Saturday afternoon.
After Taylor threw up a buzzer-beater assist to Fall, he clinched the win by stealing the ball from Houston’s top shooter Rob Gray Jr. with 40 seconds on the clock.
Taylor took a hard foul from Gray that sent him to the floor, but pulled himself together to bank two free throws that distanced UCF’s lead 74-67 with less than a minute to play before an excited announced crowd of 5,489.
“[I’ve] got a lot of respect for him. He’s a good player,” Taylor said of Gray, the American Athletic Conference’s second leading scorer averaging 20.4 points per game. “He made some good plays all night, so we just wanted to make it tough on him going into the game and make it tough on the other two shooters [Damyean] Dotson and [Wes] Vanbeck. I think we have some areas to get better in, but I think overall we did a good job.”
Gray still did some damage, earning 28 points and four assists but Taylor bested him and the Cougars with two clutch steals in the final 40 seconds of a game during which he scored 20 points.
Some key late rebounds from reserve forward Chad Brown also helped UCF continue to build on its defensive success this season.
But UCF coach Johnny Dawkins certainly didn’t mind the offensive relief the Knights provided against Houston after struggling to convert shots during their past two contests against East Carolina and UConn.
The Knights shot an embarrassing 26 percent against the Pirates and only slightly improved to 33 percent against UConn.
On Saturday, five players finished in double figures: Tank Efianayi (15), A.J. Davis (15), Matt Williams (10), Fall (11) and Taylor (20).
“I was starting to wonder if all the work we put in didn’t pay off,” Dawkins said with a chuckle. “But it usually does. Our guys shot the ball well and like I’ve said, I have the ultimate confidence in all our players as you can tell by the shots that they take that I must have seen them take those shots before in practice and in workouts.
“I believe in them, they believe in themselves and I think that’s why you saw the result tonight of guys stepping up and hitting shots that they take in practice and that they make.”
UCF still has areas to clean up. The team’s 20 turnovers didn’t sit well with Dawkins and Taylor acknowledged the Knights need to address the mental lapses that sometimes plague them.
But the Knights did show some fight even amid the mistakes.
With Houston knocking at the door to challenge UCF’s 40-39 lead for the first time in the game, Fall, Taylor and Williams helped UCF respond with 7-0 run. It forced the Cougars to call a timeout with 14 minutes left in the game.
UCF’s strong team defense and the tenacious late plays from Taylor fended off another Houston rally in the final minute.
“We’ve been resilient,” Dawkins said. “[Houston] made a good run, but our guys have been in that situation before and I thought they handled it well. We knew we needed to get stops at that point and we knew we needed to execute and I thought our guys did both.”