Women's basketball loses fifth straight

The UCF Women's Basketball team lost their fifth straight game 69-61 to UAB Sunday night in front of a record crowd of 1,636 fans.

The Knights would trail by as many as 23 points in the second half before a late charge brought the final score to within double-digits.

"That's the team that we can be for 40 minutes every game out and that's the disappointing thing," head coach Joi Williams said. "That's regression really, that's something that a young team might do. A team like ours that's experienced, we expect to come out and play from the start."

The Knights (3-10, 0-4 C-USA) came out of the gates especially slow on offense, scoring just 19 first half points.

UAB (10-6, 4-0 C-USA) had an equally rough start to the game and held just a 15-13 lead with 5:43 to play in the first half.

The Blazers then went on a run led by an unexpected shooter in Nakia McDaniel who hit three consecutive three-pointers giving UAB a 26-13 lead.

UAB went into halftime up 31-19 behind six-of-13 shooting on three-pointers in the half.

"You know that from the scouting report, you know that they can hit threes," Williams said. "If there was anyone that surprised us, [McDaniel] might have. Other than that, the other kids that hit them, that was the scout. We just didn't do our job of getting to the shooters quick enough."

The Knights shot just 36 percent from the field in the first half and turned the ball over 11 times. One positive was that leading scorer Emma Cannon had only picked up one foul and was able to play the entire first half, scoring eight points.

Cannon would get little help for the game as she finished with 16 points and 13 rebounds. Marshay White and Angelica Mealing joined Cannon in double-figures with 14 and 12 points, respectively.

Other than that, UCF received just four points from D'Nay Daniels and two from Chelsie Wiley, who averaged 26 points per game in two meetings against UAB last season.

The Knights fell behind by 23 points with 11:42 left in the game following a three-pointer by Jala Harris who led the Blazers with 20 points in the game and was four-of-five from beyond the arc.

The Knights eventually made a run but they waited too long to do so. Still trailing by 23 with 5:41 to play, UCF looked like a completely different team from the first half fighting back behind a pressing defense and aggressively penetrating offense.

"I just think we weren't being aggressive [in the first half]," Williams said. "We didn't look to get the ball inside and that was the difference. In the last 10 minutes we got the ball in either by penetration or getting the ball into Emma [Cannon]."

After cutting the deficit to 15 with just over three minutes to play, Amanda Peterson of UAB delivered a vicious blow with a deep three-pointer to enlarge the lead back to 18 at 60-42.

A layup by Daniels got the deficit to less than double-digits for the first time since the first half with 33 seconds to play.

When it was all said and done, the Knights just couldn't overcome UAB's clutch downtown shooting as they hit 11-of-22 three-point attempts for the game.

The next game for the Knights will be Jan. 21 when they host conference foe Southern Miss.