A tight first half gave way to tale of two halves in the second half, but the end result was a 74-63 victory for the UCF Knights over the College of Charleston in the first round of The Battle of Atlantis. The first ten minutes of the second half saw the Cougars of the College of Charleston shoot very well from the outside and go up by as many as seven points while UCF struggled to put any kind of offense together but that script was flipped in the last ten minutes as the Knights dominated the rest of the contest and outscored the Cougars 30 to 12 down the stretch.
The Knights were led by a monster game by Keith Clanton who had 28 points, 14 rebounds, and 3 blocks while shooting 12 of 17 from the field. Clanton was joined by Marcus Jordan who scored 17 points and Isaiah Sykes who scored 10 despite going just 4 of 13 from the free throw line.
Not often does a team win a game when shooting higher from the floor than they do from the free throw line, but UCF did just that shooting 50% from the floor while shooting just 48% from the free throw line. Sykes was 4 of 13 while the rest of the team was 9 of 14 from the line. The UCF defense made up for the team’s struggles from the free throw line by holding the Cougars to 41% shooting from the floor and just 8 of 23 from the 3-point line.
The College of Charleston was led by Trent Wiedeman who scored 19 points but the program’s leading scorer, Antwaine Wiggins, was held to just two points as he went 1 of 6 from the floor on the night.
UCF now awaits the winner of the game between defending national champion UCONN and UNC-Asheville and will face them at 2PM ET tomorrow.