Knights Finding Ways to Lose

Following a very solid first half in which UCF raced out to a 10-0 lead against ECU, the familiar happened and disaster once again struck.

The Knights have seemingly found ways to lose even when everything is going their way. As legendary head coach and current VP of the Miami Dolphins Bill Parcells famously said, “you are what your record says you are.” UCF is 2-6, but it appears that they’re a much better team than that, especially if you go by their great first half performances this season. One or two plays, here and there would likely have won several games for the Knights, but those plays just haven’t came.

“What can you say, we had our opportunities and we came up short,” Coach O’Leary said following the loss. “As far as the game is concerned, I thought the players gave good effort. They did some good things. The execution in the fourth quarter hurt us, and the ball security. That was the difference in the game. It was a good win for ECU and a tough loss (for UCF). You can't turn the ball over like we did at the end and expect to still win the game. I thought the kids still went out and played extremely hard. It is a tough loss and we will have to regroup with a short week and get ready for the next game."

Effort hasn’t been the problem for the Knights, just second-half execution. On Sunday night, the ECU Pirates really didn’t do anything differently in the second half, but the Knights seemed to make some unforced errors then just run out of gas.

"ECU didn't change anything (on defense),” O’Leary explained. “It was more of a lack of execution. We dropped some passes you have to catch. Those are first downs. I think our margin of error on offense is very small, and when we have opportunities to make plays we have to make them. "

The youth and inexperience of the UCF offense seems to be rearing its ugly head from week to week and instead of finding ways to clinch and hold on to games, they are finding ways to lose them with untimely turnovers, and dropped passes.

“We have to finish, we have to play the way we’ve been practicing all week, need to execute, finish games, and finish for 60 minutes,” said senior cornerback Joe Burnett. “Put points on the board and deny points.”

It sounds easy, and the team looks capable for the majority of most games, but they’ve been falling short.

“Losing is contagious, we strive to stay together as a team and we’ll try to get the last four,” Burnett said following Sunday’s game.

The Knights will try to end a horrible streak of disappointment this Saturday as they take on Southern Miss on Homecoming.