UCF once again trailed by double digits Saturday against Tulane in the second half, just days after falling down by 20 points at East Carolina.
The Knights, somehow, won both games to move up to 5th place in the American Athletic Conference standings as of Sunday.
While it’s great for UCF to have the ability to come back from such large deficits — winning 92-85 in overtime against the Pirates last Tuesday and 68-66 over the Green Wave this weekend — how can the Knights ultimately avoid those situations in the first place?
UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said he’s looking for more effort throughout an entire game.
“To continue to improve we need to make sure that we try to play 40 minutes like we played the last 10 minutes of this game and the last 20 minutes of our last game,” Dawkins said Saturday. “We need to have a 40-minute effort with good execution and I didn’t think we had that in these two games.”
Dawkins gave credit to both ECU and Tulane for why UCF didn’t execute until well into the second half in both games.
“Everybody’s making adjustments. Everybody has game plans, so we have to be able to adapt,” Dawkins said. “We have to get better from these experiences so that we’re playing our best basketball as that time starts to come.”
Senior guard Darius Perry, who played a key role in UCF’s comeback at ECU, has a theory of his own.
“Just stay energized the entire time,” Perry said about playing a full 40 minutes. “We have points in the game where we lose energy and teams take advantage of that. So [we need to] just stay energized the entire time [and] realize that we’re a very talented team but talent is not going to win games for us.”
Perry scored just 1 point Saturday following a 19-point performance vs. the Pirates.
While the senior certainly didn’t have his best game, true freshman guard Darius Johnson continued on the right path, scoring a season-high 17 points, passing the 16 he had at ECU.
The two guards, besides sharing a first name, also believe they’re dangerous when they share the backcourt.
“In my perspective, I think we’re one of the best backcourts in the country, to be honest with you,” Johnson said. “We’re both really scrappy guards, we love to play defense, we’ll get up in you and we’re both dual-level scorers, so it’s hard to keep us in front of you.”
Perry said he and Johnson both have high basketball IQs, which refers to the ability to play instinctively and adapt throughout the game.
“We can always make connecting plays; make the right plays on the court,” Perry said. “We can penetrate and make plays for other people as well as for ourselves. That’s really a big dynamic to have on the court at any time.”
Regardless of who is on the court for the Knights, Dawkins said his team understands it needs to take the season one game at a time as March approaches.
“The more you push through January and enter into February, you want to be playing your best basketball when it comes to March and hopefully, we’re trending in that direction by taking some of these lessons that we’ve learned from being down in these games,” Dawkins said. “That’s going to help us immensely as we move forward.”
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Jason Beede at jbeede@orlandosentinel.com or follow him on Twitter at @therealBeede.