ORLANDO – The UCF men’s basketball team eared its second victory in as many contests to tipoff the 2024-25 campaign, posting a 75-68 win over Purdue Fort Wayne on Friday night.
“We beat a very good team, I’ve watched the way Jon coaches them, they’ve been very successful and it was a new type of opponent we were playing. It was great for a guys to be in this type of game again, a close contest where we were gonna have to make plays and get stops on the defensive end, and we were able to step up in that moment.”
Johnny DawkinsUCF Men's Basketball Head CoachA number of performers jumped off the stat sheet. Jordan Ivy-Curry led the scoring with 18 points while Keyshawn Hall was the first Knight to earn a double-double on the season, scoring 14 points and hauling in 12 rebounds. Rookie Moustapha Thiam was brilliant again, this time on the offensive side of things, earning 13 points and grabbing six boards. While not reaching double-digits, Darius Johnson had seven assists to go with his seven points.
The stat sheet didn’t have many tallies to start the contest as there was just one basket made through the first six minutes of play. Purdue Fort Wayne added their second triple with 13:56 left on the clock, making it 6-0 in favor of the visitors, a squad picked to win the Horizon League this season.
UCF missed its first nine shots on the evening, including four of which were from three. The Knights finally got on the board with a pair of free throws from Keyshawn Hall with 13:37 to play in the first. UCF found its stride after that, hitting its next four shots. Darius Johnson tossed in a layup, followed by a dunk from Rokas Jocius to level the score and a Benny Williams layup for the lead at 8-6. A Jordan Ivy-Curry steal led to a quick pass and a driving dunk by Nils Machowski to really get UCF’s momentum rolling.
Machowski contributed a free throw and a triple to give UCF a lead at 16-10 with 8:29 left in the period. A Moustapha Thiam free throw made it 17-10, which was the largest lead of the first half. The advantage was again seven at 23-16 with just over five minutes remaining, but from there Purdue Fort Wayne chipped away, cutting its deficit to just one at halftime.
The Mastodons came out of the break firing, scoring the first six points of the second half to take a five-point lead, forcing UCF to burn a timeout. The Knights quickly erased the brief deficit, as Johnson drove in for a tough layup, followed by a Dallan ‘Deebo’ Coleman triple, his first three-points as a Knight.
The next 10 minutes of game action acted like a metronome, as anytime a Mastodon would score, a Knight swayed the momentum back like clockwork to either tie or cut into the deficit. UCF drew even five times in that 10-minute span but were unable to jump in front.
The Knights finally drew ahead by one with 8:20 after a Hall made free throw with 8:40 to play, but saw Purdue Fort Wayne go back up by four with just under seven minutes remaining. Thiam hit a beautiful hook shot to slice the deficit back to 64-60 before he hit another jumper to tie things up with 5:46 to play.
Ivy- Curry was the one to put the Knights ahead for good, driving in for a layup with 3:45 left. Thiam added another clutch two points 40 seconds later. Purdue Fort Wayne tossed in a layup to cut things back to two, but that was the closest they got the rest of the way. Johnson, Ivy-Curry and Hall were responsible for the final five points of the game in the 75-68 win.
UCF’s defense was in lockdown mode in the final moments of action as the Mastodons missed nine of their final 10 shots of the contest. The defensive side of the ball was solid the entirety of the evening, building on Monday night’s performance against the Aggies. The Black and Gold forced 13 Purdue Fort Wayne turnovers after luring Texas A&M into a dozen in game one. The Knights snatched eight steals on Friday night after swiping nine in the opener.
The frond waving faithful showed up yet again for the Knights in the second half, helping to force the Mastodons to miss their first three free throws of the second half and finish the final frame going just two-of-five. Purdue Fort Wayne got to the charity stripe just seven times on the evening, going four-for-seven overall. The story was completely different on the flip side for the Black and Gold as they marched to the line 30 times, sinking 23 chances. The seven attempted Mastodon free throws was the lowest since Stetson went three-for-five from the stripe on Dec. 21, 2022 in a 73-58 Knights win.
Johnson’s seven assists on the evening gives him an impressive dozen to start the campaign. It’s the most in a pair of games to begin the season since Coach Dawkins’ first season at UCF when B.J. Taylor tallied 15 assists in to begin the 2016-17 campaign. Hall’s double-double was the 10th of his career after he recorded nine last season.
The win was the 150th victory at UCF for Coach Dawkins. Plenty of memorable games come to mind when looking back on the 150 mark, including a handful of court storms and milestone victories that helped shape the program into its current state today. Nine of UCF’s 11 wins over ranked opponents have been under the direction of Coach Dawkins. The Knights celebrated his 300th career win last season with a triumphant 74-63 win over No. 23 Oklahoma on Feb. 3 last season.
UP NEXT
The Knights are set to meet their first in-state foe of the season as they welcome Florida Atlantic to The City Beautiful on Tuesday for a 7 p.m. tipoff on ESPN+.