“We were poor defensively tonight. Worst game we’ve played defensively all year long. We didn’t get stops. Will Coleman struggled. We couldn’t get stops whether it was man or zone, and we tried both.”
Coach Josh Pastner didn’t pull punches in evaluating his club’s win tonight, an affair much closer than he’d like at home against a UCF club limping along at 3-5 in C-USA play. In the first game since the dismissal of senior center Pierre Henderson-Niles, Pastner’s imprint was evident from the beginning. Freshman shooting specialist Drew Barham started, having played a total of 66 minutes in the team’s first 23 games. (Elliot Williams had played 76 minutes in the last two games.) Barham and fellow freshman D.J. Stephens combined to play 27 minutes to eat up the vacancy in the rotation. Stephens brought his usual energy boost and contributed seven rebounds in 17 minutes on the floor.
- Larry Kuzniewski
- Willie Kemp
Behind for much of the first half, the Tigers took the lead just before the break on a three-pointer from Roburt Sallie in the right corner. The combination of UCF accuracy (the Knights shot 57 percent in the first half) and the return to earth of Wesley Witherspoon (he missed six of seven shots in the first half after scoring a total of 55 points in the Tigers’ last two games) had the visitors in position to win their first game in eight tries against Memphis.
