#HailYeah 🏀, same old Heupel and the best of 2021 🎉
A massive non-conference win for Johnny Dawkins' group ahead of conference play, plus Tennessee fans, welcome to Josh Heupel's awful late-game management
I can’t believe we close out 2021 today! What a crazy, weird, emotional and oddly satisfying year it was. Thank you all for supporting this newsletter during our launch. I can’t wait for what 2022 has in store.
By the way, have you checked out these awesome threads from our friends at Smack apparel? These “State Champs” shirts are legit 💯. I grabbed mine. Scoop yours up before they run out.
Today’s read is 4.5 minutes ⏲️
Trending in the Kingdom: #HailYeah! ⬇️ goes Michigan Ⓜ️🏀
👏🏻 Man, what a week for UCF Athletics. In a 7-day span, the Knights beat the Florida Gators in the Gasparilla Bowl and knocked off the Michigan Wolverines in basketball.
Imagine me telling you that a decade ago 😅.
Here’s the scoop: Michigan may not be the same squad that started the season ranked No. 6 in the country in the preseason AP poll, but they’re still a NCAA tournament team with national championship aspirations, and UCF manhandled them.
After being down a dozen early in the second half, the Knights stormed back to beat the Wolverines, 85-71, in front of 9,358 strong at Addition Financial Arena, the third-largest crowd ever, sparked by an 18-2 run second-half run to erase a 12-point deficit.
📉 Michigan had a 88.5% win probability at the 16:01 mark in the second half, before UCF’s comeback.
UCF is now 9-2 and have won five straight. They’re 14-3 over its last 17 games, dating back to last season.
Brandon Mahan was lethal in the second half, scoring 22 of his 26 points and was perfect from the field, adding five 3’s.
Darin Green Jr. - the better-known DG 😉 - led all players in scoring with a career-high 27 points, draining seven of his nine 3-point attempts. He surely impressed the NBA scouts in the building.
Mahan and Green combined to score 62% of the Knights’ overall point total.
The Knights knocked down 72% of their shots in the second half, going 8-for-8 from downtown.
What they’re saying 🗣: Johnny Dawkins
“It’s one of the best second halves we’ve ever had,” Dawkins said. “Our guys really responded well both offensively and defensively. Defensively, our guys really started to dig deep, especially when we got down…[When] we get to making shots like we’re capable of, you see what can happen tonight.”
Revenge game 😈: This basically was a reversal of what happened in last year’s game in Ann Arbor, when UCF led by as much as 12 in the first half, only to see Michigan reel off a 15-0 run over a five-minute stretch to steal a win.
That Michigan squad came up a bucket short of the Final Four earlier this year. Clearly, this year’s group is going through some growing pains, with five losses in their last 10 games.
So, what did we learn? 🤔
Green is money 💰: Darin Green Jr. is on record saying he wants to break Matt Williams’ UCF record of 274 career 3-pointers. Green set a UCF freshman record last season with 68. Right now, he has 36 through 11 games, so he’s on pace to surpass last year’s total. Watch out, Matt, Darin’s comin’ for ya in the years to come.
Veteran experience paying off ✅: We already knew this group was coming in with plenty of miles on the tires, having returned 97 percent of its points scored and 96 percent of their minutes played from last season, but would that experience help? It seems so. This group didn’t fold when Michigan opened up the second half on a 9-1 run. In fact, they buckled down, believed and stayed calm, a sign of a squad that’s not only familiar playing with each other, but has the grit to stage any comeback.
Tournament time 🏀? UCF won’t have a cakewalk in conference play, but this absolutely looks like a group that can contend for a spot in the Big Dance. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament just five times in their history, with the last coming in 2019 when they nearly knocked off Zion Williamson and Duke to reach the Sweet 16. Let’s see if Mahan, Perry and Co. can hang with Memphis, Houston and Cincinnati in the coming weeks. They may have a legitimate shot at a conference title, or at least a change at an at-large bid to March Madness.
Next up 📆: Jan. 2, 2022: UCF vs. SMU, at 2 p.m. ET, in Dallas, Texas.
Not so Heuped in Nashville 😡
Don’t say we didn’t warn you, Vol fans 🙃. Look, Josh Heupel’s offense speaks for itself. He truly was innovative at UCF and I find myself longing for (and getting called out for) the up-tempo playbook Heupel perfected in Orlando.
It’s no surprise he broke Tennessee’s single-season scoring record in Year 1.
But, Tennessee fans, we tried to sound the alarm about the frustrating end-of-game mismanagement by Heupel, which, unfortunately, became an all-too-familiar sight on the sidelines at UCF. They saw it first-hand in the Music City Bowl.
Fill me in: Tennessee lost to Purdue, 48-45, in overtime in front of a very pro-UT crowd at Nissan Stadium, which is just a short walk from the famous Lower Broadway in Downtown Nashville.
The “Bedlam off Broadway” featured over 1,293 yards of total offense - the second-most in overall bowl history- and 93 points, but some bad clock mismanagement and a questionable goal-line call in OT left UT fans with a sour finish to what was otherwise a successful first season under Heupel.
Tennessee had an opportunity to win the game in regulation, beginning at its own 40 with 44 seconds remaining, but it was a wasted possession, ending with a missed field goal. Here’s how it went:
The Vols had all three timeouts for the final crucial seconds in a 45-45 game.
Heupel called back-to-back runs by Jabari Small, with time ticking down.
He then called a short pass completion for Hendon Hooker, and then took two deep shots down the field, each overthrown.
That set up a long, 56-yard field goal attempt, which went wide-right, setting up overtime.
“Just some high coverage from them,” Heupel said postgame when asked about the final drive in regulation. “The box was light. Probably had a chance to handle it and pick up some yards. We didn’t execute the call when we were on the 41-yard line, 42-yard line, whatever it was there, for a couple plays there, to get us in a little better field position.”
Then came overtime, when Heupel elected to go for it on 4th-and-1 at the Purdue goal line, instead of kicking a field goal. Running back Jaylen Wright got stopped just short of the goal-line, with officials saying Wright's forward progress was stopped, despite him reaching the ball over the goal line before the play was blown dead.
To be fair, I don’t blame Heupel for going for it, and his viral f-bomb reaction, when the call was made. I thought Wright had scored.
Heupel’s reaction to the official’s call was short post-game: “Yeah, he said the forward progress had been stopped. I don’t know. Sounded like the whistle blew after he extended the football.”
Technically, per the NCAA rule book, that final play should have been flagged anyway for Tennessee, since Wright was getting pulled across the goal line.
The View from Knoxville ✍️: “You couldn’t fault Tennessee’s offense in a 48-45 overtime loss to Purdue in the Music City Bowl in Nashville on Thursday. But you could fault the offensive play calling,” Josh Adams wrote for the Knoxnews.com. “…the calls were inexplicable in the final minute of regulation when Tennessee had a chance to move into field-goal range.”
All eight of Heupel’s losses at UCF were by one score, so Knight Nation knows the late-game frustration all too well. He was 2-8 all-time in one-score games at UCF, which featured some truly questionable calls in crunch time.
Give me a Knugget 🐴: Big Ten teams are 2-7 all time when allowing 45 points in bowl games. Purdue has both of those wins, in 2007 and 2021.
The best of 2021 🎉
I attempted to put together a top five moments of 2021 for UCF Athletics, even asking for some of your input on Twitter. Here’s what we came up with:
No. 1: The Big 12 invite
No. 2: Gasparilla Bowl win over Florida
No. 3: Title month in Orlando
No. 4: Taking the lead in the War on I-4
No. 5: Rayniah’s run to the Olympics
So, thoughts on the five best moments? Hit me up on Twitter with yours.
Seriously, a huge thanks for an amazing 2021. Appreciate you all so much! Have a safe, healthy and happy New Year! - Ry