If the UCF women’s basketball team proved anything in Thursday’s quarterfinal win over regular season champion SMU, it’s that the Knights are a force to be reckoned with in their final Conference USA Tournament.<\/p>\n
The Knights sent the No. 1 seed home packing with a 70-66 win after battling back from a 10-point, first-half deficit. UCF (15-17) will now face UTEP in Friday’s semifinals at 11 a.m. ET on CBS Sports Network at Tulsa’s BOK Center.<\/p>\n
The Knights are the first eight seed since 2001 and just the third all-time to advance to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Much like in Friday’s opening round win, Gevenia Carter stole the show in the first half with 17 points and finished the game with her third-straight 20-point outing.<\/p>\n
Freshman Briahanna Jackson took over as the hot hand in the second half with four 3-pointers en route to 18 points. She also rewrote the 25-year-old program record for single-season steals with her four thefts in the game to bring her total to 105.<\/p>\n
Junior Sara Djassi proved to be a big boost for the Knights with a season-high 15 points and seven rebounds.<\/p>\n
“We just play together,” Carter said. “Coach always tells us to play together as a team and as a family and we’ll be victorious. We knew it was going to be a hard game. We knew SMU is a really good team, but we had confidence in each other and we got the win.”<\/p>\n
Carter started the game off with two steals that converted to two layups to help the Knights hop out to an 8-2 lead. SMU woke up and responded with a 23-7 run that was capped by Korina Baker’s steal and fastbreak layup for a 25-15 lead with 8:20 remaining.<\/p>\n
UCF buckled down on defense and held SMU (21-9) without a field goal for nearly five and a half minutes while it slowly chipped away at the deficit. When Carter drained a dead-on look at the basket from the top of the arc, she not only shrank the gap to 28-26, but she also jumped into the program’s all-time top-10 scorers list.<\/p>\n
Kayli Keough closed out the half with a hustle play that forced a jumpball in UCF’s favor. She then banked a bucket down low to bring her team within 1 point at halftime, 33-32.<\/p>\n
SMU rattled off five quick points to start the second half and kept its lead intact through the first 10 minutes. The Knights called a timeout after Gabrielle Wilkins hit a jumper that put the Mustangs up 52-45, and the regrouping worked.<\/p>\n
Jackson sank a trio of 3-pointers that fueled a run to put the Knights on top, 58-55, with less than six minutes to play.<\/p>\n
The teams exchanged basket after basket before Carter gave UCF a two-possession lead, 66-62, by rebounding her own misfire in the paint and following with a layup with two minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
The Mustangs seemed to run out of horsepower at the end while UCF closed out the game at the free throw line.<\/p>\n
UCF now holds a 10-5 record in the post-season tournament, which includes a 2-0 mark in semifinal contests. The winner of Saturday’s championship, which will also air on CBS Sports Network, will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
As always, fans can tune into Scott Adams’ free audio broadcast, which is also available on mobile devices. Live stats are also available via UCFAthletics.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Knights will play in Friday’s semifinals at 11 a.m. ET on CBS Sports Network. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":46953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[9380,1952,6402,9602,202,5198],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-46952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-briahanna-jackson","tag-gevenia-carter","tag-kayli-keough","tag-sara-djassi","tag-alumni","tag-womens-basketball"],"yoast_head":"\n