ECU @ UCF: Post-game Review (W 74-71)

Last night was Senior Knight, and anyone watching the game could tell. Our eldest members of the team, Jermaine and Kenrick, were clearly the leaders both emotionally and in the stat books. Jermaine played his best defensive game I've seen all year; perfect timing with the Charlotte Bobcats scout that was in attendance. I took down at least half of the notes that Mr. Scott Howard wrote down, and I'll list those at the end. Jermaine stuck with his man far better than I have ever seen him do, coming off screens well and getting a hand up on just about every shot. He shot much better from the field in the second half, and finally started to drive the open lane instead of looking for threes.

Will Weathers greatly impressed me as well with some lockdown defense on Brock Young that no one else seemed to provide without being called for a foul. I loved his vision as well, especially when he was able to see the lane and be confident enough to take it to the hole. PJ Gaynor also showed some ability off the bench tonight, knocking down a couple of inside shots and layups.

Zondervan came up with an incredibly heads-up game saving play with 3 seconds left. As Sam Hinnant (the Pirates leading scorer and hot hand all night) drove to the lane, he drew AJ Tyler as a defender, but didn't seem to notice Z slip into his lane and plant his feet to take a charge. Simultaneously Kenny and the crowd were electric. A perfect ending to a great Senior Knight, and a great beginning to what promises to be a riveting post-season tournament.

Notes from Scott Howard:

Excellent body
Outstanding confident athlete
Moves well without the ball
Very good rotation on jumper
Oustanding stepback move
Nice change of pace dribble
Involved others early in the game
Aggressive offensive rebounder
Uses body well to seperate from defender
On defense, closes out
Good defensive feet
Can stay with a driver

This guy had some of the smallest handwriting I've ever seen on his shot charts, but thankfully he had his laptop and constantly wrote notes on that large enough that I could read them. He also added center Chad Wynn from ECU to his potential draft prospects, and took down a few notes about him that I was unable to see. Wynn is only a sophomore, so I have to assume he was just preparing for future drafts.

Soap Box Talk

Jermaine Taylor’s number should hang from the rafters on Senior Knight.

Jermaine Taylor is the truest definition of a student athlete. When all is said and done, Jermaine will solidify himself as one of the greatest athletes to step on to UCF’s campus, but more importantly, he will graduate with a degree he has worked so hard for. That is the purpose of college, is it not? In fact, Jermaine Taylor’s number should be hanging up well before #24 ever receives immortal status. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll love Kevin Smith for all he did for UCF, but he does not represent what a student athlete is. He dropped out. Plain and simple.

Jermaine, more than likely, will win the CUSA Player of The Year Award, and he will graduate as UCF’s #1 career scoring leader at the Division I level, and may pass Bo Clarks DII record before the season ends. He’ll be on an NBA roster next year, and he’ll have his college education; one that he earned. Kevin Smith can’t say that. Call me crazy. I probably am. But that doesn’t change the fact that Jermaine Taylor, and his jersey number, should be immortalized at UCF. Put it next to NCAA Tournament banners, or better yet, place a giant banner on that eyesore of a wall behind the student section.

The UCF Arena will always be known as the house that Kirk built, but somewhere inside, the legend of #1 should live on forever.

Make it happen, UCF.

Rice @ UCF: Post-game Review (L 66-69)

Apparently we are not a mirror of Davidson University. Jermaine Taylor looked like Stephen Curry last night, just without the minimal scoring help Curry gets. I understand that most of our players are playing their first year in college (Rompza, Tyler, Sosa, Gaynor, Weathers, Baez from last night), but were they this scared to shoot the ball in high school? I can’t imagine that Kirk would tell them NOT to shoot, so I’m not sure what they’re afraid of. Not one starter other than Jermaine took more than 5 shots last night. FIVE.

AJ Rompza had a rough game last night, getting in foul trouble early. I have to say, we need AJ Rompza in the game. He seems to be the only player out there that doesn’t play like he’s terrified and overmatched. He plays with intensity and confidence, and that is exactly the thing we need this year. Our gears of our offense seem to grind to an immediate stop whenever Rompza comes out of the game. No one on our team has the speed or will to drive to the hole and either go up for the layup or kick it out for a shot.

Part of the deficit we incurred through most of the game had to do with our perimeter defense, the other part came from Rice’s incredible three point shooting. To begin the first half Rice had open shots on three pointers innumerous times, and nailed just about all of them. When we actually started to get a hand in the face of shooters, they STILL hit shots. I saw at least two incredible fadeaway shots sink from beyond the arc, and for that I will give Rice their props.

One other side-effect of having no one to drive to the hoop or play strong inside (plus a few terrible “no calls” by the officials), is a huge lack of foul shots. Jermaine shot 12 for 13 from the line, that’s awesome. No one else on our team took a foul shot last night. Not a single player. Seems like an issue to me.

Tulsa @ UCF: Post-game Review (W 74-72)

Matt's game notes:

I’m not sure what it is about Tulsa University, but when they come to town, both teams come to play hard. This game just cemented itself in my top two games of all time, only behind the triple overtime thriller against Tulsa at home last year. Let me start this off with a big props to Jermaine Taylor: To anyone who accused Jermaine of being “not clutch”, he ran off 13 straight points last night to bring us back to an 8 point deficit. He banged down three 3 pointers to get the crowd back on their feet, and hit all of his free throws during the 13 point run. There were PLENTY of NBA scouts there tonight to see his performance, but I’ll get back to that later.

There is one man I would never want to play basketball against, simply because of his passion and effort level in the game. Kenrick Zondervan is downright scary when he gets his head on right and his adrenaline pumping. He played incredibly well last night and did his job almost flawlessly. He got the ball inside and backed his man down for some nice layups off the glass. He had a couple of travelling calls on him, but he made up for it later. The best part of his performance last night, and probably the biggest factor on our win, was his ability to get Jerome Jordan in foul trouble early. Jerome had two fouls by the 15 minute mark in the first half and played very sparingly until the 2^nd half. Z finished the game with 18 points, just short of his season high 19 against ECU.

NBA Scouts: There were quite a few scouts in attendance last night to see both Jerome Jordan and our own Jermaine Taylor. At the media table in front of us there were three men we were able to confirm as scouts: One from the Los Angeles Lakers, one from the Detroit Pistons, and one from the Orlando Magic (the same scout from last time). As some of you know, most of the scouts from the NBA are friendly with each other and have met each other before, like most sports talent scouts. In addition to these three, there were 4 more men who sat next to and between them, all talking and seemingly taking notes. They also left the game all at the same time. Putting all of this together, we can only assume that the additional 4 men were scouts as well.

Some of the things we were able to get off the notes:

· On JT: Doesn’t always get back on defense immediately after a rebound

· On JT: Started slow, but is catching fire late

· On JT: His shot release is too low (which he later erased once Jermaine started hitting his 3s)

· On Jerome: Doesn’t do much to stop the pass inside.

Southern Miss @ UCF: Post-game Review

Matt's Thoughts on the game:
The Knights played very well in a convincing win tonight over conference foe Southern Miss. Jermaine Taylor led us in scoring as always, I saw a different Jermaine Taylor tonight than I have ever seen before. Southern Miss shut him down inside both from the post and off of drives. Although he had quite a few open looks from 3, he was only 3-10 on the night. He cooled off noticeably going into halftime after missing 2 or 3 of them in a row, and the most important part of the night, he made the adjustment! Jermaine started taking mid-range jumpers and nailed them every time. This is the kind of adjustment I’ve been looking for from him for the last two years. We’ve known he can shoot the 3 and slam the ball, but could he consistently make jumpers inside the arc? Yes he can, and yes he did. He was blocked twice on dunks and seemed to get flustered for about 5 minutes while trying to do too much to prove himself. After he calmed down, he came back to hitting 15 foot jumpers with ease.

Zondervan had another great offensive game, and I cannot stress enough how much I love his passion and hustle. He’s receiving passes in the paint much better lately, and it shows. He finished his layups well tonight, and he seems to be hitting his stride. I saw quite a few great passes tonight; especially the one to Z right after the Golden Eagles missed a shot. We took down the rebound and quickly moved it up the court, ending with a quick slicing pass under the basket to Kenny for the easy bucket. His hustle made the play perfect. He sprinted the length of the court to get in position quickly and executed perfectly.

The three point shooting the Golden Eagles displayed tonight was completely unexpected on my part. They shot 10% higher tonight than they have on the season, a clear improvement. We did get into some foul trouble tonight with Zondervan and Rompza racking up 3 fouls each just after halftime, but our depth is proving to be our strength. When Rompza comes out, Taylor Young and Will Weathers come in and play just as well. When Z gets in a bit of trouble, AJ Tyler comes in with some beautiful sky hooks.

I was very impressed tonight, and we proved we can play near the top of this conference. We need to keep this momentum rolling through this home-stand and beyond.

Another NBA Scout?: On a side note, word inside the arena was that an Orlando Magic scout came to watch the game while taking notes from section 107. More NBA news for Mr. Jermaine Taylor is always good for both the school and Jermaine himself.

Southern Miss @ UCF: Preview

Matt's pre-game notes:

After taking down Rice for their first conference win, the Knights come home tomorrow for a game against the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles. Southern Miss enters the contest with an 11-6 record, and a 2-1 in conference record, beating Tulane and a decent Houston team while losing to an underrated Tulsa team.

The Golden Eagles have a solid team overall. From what I can tell, there are a few things we need to look out for:

Guard Jeremy Wise, #3. He’s the team’s leading scorer at 17 PPG and he shoots almost 30% from 3. A versatile player, he lacks great height. To counter him, we’re going to need Jermaine Taylor to do what he does best: score. His 3pt% isn’t anything near amazing, so Tony Davis and Kenny Z are going to have to continue their dominance inside and make it tough for him to drive to the hoop. They don’t necessarily have to avoid fouls as much with AJ Tyler playing well inside lately as well. We have the depth to allow a couple of fouls to discourage their inside game.

Guard Craig Craft, #23. He’s the teams best 3 point shooter by miles, and has played in every game this season, starting in 9 of them. He hits almost 40% of his 3 pointers, a very solid number. We have to keep an eye on him whenever he’s beyond the arc. We may want to stick Rompza on him so we have someone on him at all times.

There are a couple of notes we should take advantage of with the Golden Eagles as well:

They have a huge lack of depth. Their starters account for 88% of their points, and we need to take advantage of this. We need to run a fast paced offense while moving the ball quickly down the court. We have far more depth than they do, and while we can sub in bench players to give our starters rest and still score, they aren’t going to be able to. We need to run, run, run, and run some more. Either they’re going to run with us and get tired, or let us run and have advantages in numbers down the floor after defensive rebounds.

Their other weakness is their inside play. Of their top 7 scorers, 6 are guards, and the one other is a forward. Interestingly enough their 6’3” guard Courtney Beasley is their leading rebounder by nearly 30 on the season. Davis, Zondervan, and Tyler should all crash the boards and make their putbacks. If we can’t take advantage of a weak inside game tomorrow, we may have issues.

UCF @ Rice Owls: Post-game Review

Matt’s wrap-up:

I’d like to give a preface with this review. I was not able to see the game in its entirety. I missed a minute or two at times because channelsurfing.net had to buffer and the game froze up. I would venture to say I did see around 80% of the game though.

The first half of this game was ugly, very ugly. The second half had the potential to go the same way, but thankfully Rice just couldn’t hit a shot to save their lives with ten minutes to go in the game. Time after time Rice came up with decent shots, only for them to rim out. I think we got somewhat lucky that this game wasn’t closer. Something I noticed on Rice during this time period: Their only points outside of the 6 free throws they hit was a single layup by Trey Stanton. Turnovers were a big problem with us at the beginning of the game. We had 9 giveaways up until Tony’s 3, at which point we started protecting the ball better. (We had no more for the rest of the game.)

Jermaine Taylor led the team in scoring yet again, but not by much. Tony Davis had a great game and ended with a double-double, with 12 rebounds and 17 points while playing through what looked to be a busted eyebrow. Davis also broke the game wide open with his 3 pointer with 14 minutes left in the game. Until then the game had been a very close matchup, yet after this we pulled away with an 11-0 run. Tony is turning into a gamebreaker and I’m loving it. Zondervan also had a very solid game, scoring 12 points. Our big men have been stepping it up this year when we need them more than ever. They’re making layups, and taking fouls. All we need from them is solid execution, and they’ve been great about that. Jermaine only logged 23 minutes in this game, which is interesting. Thankfully some of the guys off the bench got some playing time including Jean-Michel Yotio, Will Weathers (who showed some nifty ball handling skills when he got the chance), and PJ Gaynor.

Vin's thoughts:

1. I’m running out of colloquialism’s to use with Tony Davis during these post-game recaps, so I’m just going to recycle the old ones. TONY DAVIS, BABY! Tony Davis started to take control late in the first half, and never lost his touch in the second half. He finished with a double-double, 17 points, and 12 rebounds. He has really hit his stride, and when Tony is playing this well, you just have the confidence that we can win every game. Keep it up, TD!

2. Jermaine Taylor had another stellar performance, finishing up with 20 points and 4 boards in just 23 minutes, him and TD are becoming an insane duo.

3. Any time Kenny Z finishes with double digit points, he deserves a mention here. He finished the game with 12 points, helping maintain his team leading 63% shooting average. All the Z haters can shut up for another week now.

4. AJ Rompza had another solid game as well, earning himself 3 steals, 6 assists, and 7 points. Shorty even had 2 rebounds. Quality stuff, I love watching him improve each week. Oh yea, only 1 turnover for Rompza; when he keeps the TOs down, he gives us that much more of a chance to win.

5. Nice to see Sosa, Baez, and Tyler get some quality minutes off the bench. The trio combined for 15 points. Would be nice to see Will Weathers get some more playing time/experience. He always looks like a great ball handler when he is on the court. Hopefully he keeps working hard.

In the end, this was a big win for the Knights, it wasn’t always pretty, the defense wasn’t perfect either, but it was a huge conference win. Hopefully the fans see this score and remember to pack the dungeon this Wednesday.