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March 8, 2010
Tulsa, OK (UCFAthletics.com) - A lesser, more inexperienced team likely would have crumbled under the situation facing UCF women's basketball team on Monday in opening-round play of the Conference USA tournament.
But a Knights team that has history on its side thrived in the most tense moments of Monday's thriller.
Seemingly mired in a slump and down six points with 2:43 to play, UCF got two clutch 3-pointers from junior guard Chelsie Wiley in regulation and the Knights made all of their free throws in overtime of a 59-57 defeat of Marshall at Tulsa's Reynolds Center.
For the eighth-seeded Knights (11-15), Monday's scene was so reminiscent of last spring when UCF became the first team in league history to win four games in four days to claim the C-USA crown. UCF similarly squeaked by in Round One last year by two points and later won the championship game in overtime.
That experience proved invaluable on Monday when UCF absolutely, positively had to have it to keep its season alive.
"It's a sigh of relief for us. It's déjà vu from last year in terms of our first game and the overtime," said UCF coach Joi Williams, who wore the same gold jacket from last spring's C-USA championship game on Monday. "We talked about how we had been here before (in pressure situations) and we know what this is like. It was the same kind of scenario as last year with the overtime, and we played well."
UCF played well enough to set up a much-anticipated rematch against top-seeded Tulane (23-6 overall, 12-4 in C-USA play). The Knights led Tulane by 10 points with 5 minutes remaining back on Jan. 31 at UCF Arena, but struggled down the stretch and lost 72-70.
Wiley, UCF's most clutch performer all season, scored 19 points, hit four 3-pointers and san five free throws. She buried a deep 3-pointer with 32.6 seconds remaining to tie the game at 47-all in regulation. And then in overtime, Wiley calmly drilled four consecutive free throws to seal UCF's big victory.
"It was a scramble, but I knew I had to get the ball in my hands to at least try and tie the game with a three," Wiley said of her game-tying 3-pointer in regulation. "I just went up with confidence, shot it and it went in."
D'Nay Daniels scored nine points and grabbed 12 rebounds for the Knights, while Emma Cannon chipped in eight points and seven rebounds. Cannon, a third-team All-C-USA selection, made two free throws with 42 seconds left in overtime to break a 53-all tie.
"Coach (Williams) just told me to go up with confidence and a couple of my teammates told me to think of something else," joked Cannon, a 66.4 percent free throw shooter during the regular season. "That's what I did and I knocked them down."
Aisha Patrick, a sophomore from Rockledge, was big throughout the game with eight points, 10 rebounds and five steals.
Said Williams of Patrick: "She was the difference for us. She was outstanding. She did a great job on Chantelle Handy (two points) at the start and whoever she guarded because she's always a force defensively. She came up with some big-time steals and made some things happen. She's a player who is very important for us."
UCF led 27-17 at the break in large part by forcing 17 Marshall turnovers. The Thundering Herd (14-16, 6-10) finished with 27 turnovers, tying for the fourth most ever in a C-USA tournament game.
But UCF struggled much of the second half against Marshall's zone-trap defense. At one point in the second half, UCF had made just four of 23 shots and turned the ball over six times.
But despite falling down by as many as six points, UCF came through when it mattered most and it lives to play another day.
"I really don't think they were ever rattled," Williams said of a Knights team that used last season's experience as a weapon. "We were more frustrated than anything else and we just kept telling them to forget the mistakes. Everybody wants to get (the mistakes) back, but you can't and that's the reality of it. We had to stay in the moment and keep fighting. We played the game, and we played it to the end."
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John Denton's Knights Insider appears on UCFathletics.com several times a week. E-mail John at jdenton@athletics.ucf.edu.