 "Photo: George Oehl")
On an emotional senior night, the UCF men's basketball team dropped its home finale against East Carolina 68-66 at the UCF Arena on Tuesday night.
A teary-eyed Drew Speraw was honored before the tip off and given the start against the Pirates.
UCF (13-16, 5-10 Conference USA) led by as many as 14 points in the second half — its largest lead — but a 17-0 run by East Carolina (10-19, 4-11 C-USA) sunk the Knights in a frustrating loss.
The Knights entered Tuesday's contest with an 11-1 record in the all-time series, but they couldn't hold off the Pirate comeback.
"To be in this many close games and come out with losses, it's really frustrating," said junior guard Taylor Young, who scored 15 points. "We got casual, and we have a big problem right now of not focusing for 40 minutes."
Trailing by seven points late in the game, the Knights were able to cut the deficit to one point on a pair of free throws from freshman Keith Clanton.
Down by five points, sophomore guard Isaac Sosa drained a desperation 3-pointer with six seconds remaining in the game to make the score 68-66.
The Knights still had one last scoring opportunity when freshman guard R.J. Scott stole the Pirates' inbound pass with four seconds left. Scott passed the ball to sophomore guard A.J. Rompza, who drove to the basket and dished it to Young. The ball was tipped, and when Young got to it, all he could do was throw up a desperation shot, which fell off the back of the rim.
The key to East Carolina's success came from the floor, shooting 62.5 percent in the second half and 7 of 12 from the 3-point line.
"I just remember them draining 3 after 3, and when we needed to get a big rebound we didn't get it," Young said. "We just had no team defense. It just felt like they were getting what they wanted. We couldn't get stops, we couldn't get easy buckets and they made shots."
The Knights were not able to hit a field goal for nearly nine minutes in the second half.
Following a slow start, UCF used a 14-3 run midway through the first half, jumping out to a 13-point lead, their largest of the period.
Junior forward A.J. Tyler shot nearly 72 percent from the field to lead UCF with 16 points.
UCF head coach Kirk Speraw was disappointed that the team allowed the hangover from Saturday's game at Marshall, a 121-115 triple overtime loss, to show in the second half of the game.
"We were worried about this one for two days," Speraw said. "You could feel it with our lack of energy and lack of focus and there was a casualness about it. We warned them, but we didn't heed the warnings.
"We just couldn't pop it. We had the lead at 11, 12 and 14, but we couldn't get it to 17 or 18."
The loss marked the first time that the Knights lost in Orlando to the Pirates, previously holding a 5-0 record.
Entering the final home game of the season, UCF had won eight consecutive home finales, last losing on Feb. 24, 2001.
UCF finishes the regular season on Saturday night at Rice.
The Knights won the first meeting against the Owls 77-58 earlier in the season.
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