Will the UCF Knights Bounce Back Against Tulsa?

You can make all the excuses that you want, but Central Florida’s road loss to Connecticut was bad. Really bad.

However, UCF fans will be glad to know that there’s good news on the way. That good news will come in the form of Tulsa, a team that the Knights simply have no business losing to.

Wait, we’ve been here before.

UCF should have never put itself in a position to lose to the Huskies, who despite the victory, are still easily one of the worst teams in the entire American Athletic Conference.

So why should we trust the Knights against lowly Tulsa? Couldn’t it just as well come out and lay another huge egg against an equally bad team? It’s a certainly a legitimate question to ask and the possibility does exist.

However, the circumstances are different heading into Friday night’s primetime clash with the Golden Hurricane. Instead of coming off of five straight victories and perhaps being a little too overconfident, the Knights find themselves in an insane race for the AAC regular season title. A race in which the margin for error is extremely small.

If anything, the loss to UConn should force UCF to be even more focused than it was during the winning streak. The Knights know that a loss could very well eliminate them from the chase for the AAC crown, and hopefully, they’ve learned their lesson when it comes to allowing inferior teams to hang around.

When you give a team that has nothing to lose a little confidence, more often than not, you won’t get the results that you’re seeking. Sometimes it results in a sloppy victory and sometimes it results in an inexcusable loss.

That latter cannot happen against Tulsa. We’re talking about a team that has won two games all season, with its most recent victory coming against the worst team in college football in SMU.

But guess what? Tulsa hasn’t been blown out by anyone in AAC play. Road losses to Temple and Memphis were expected, but it wasn’t as if this team was completely dominated. Tulsa lost by 11 points to the Owls and 20 points to the Tigers, so this is far from being an SMU-caliber team.

UCF’s formula for success for a team like that? Put it to them early. Don’t let Tulsa gain any type of confidence at all in the early going. Again, when you give a team hope right off the bat, it thinks that it can play with you.

There’s no doubt that the Knights will be the superior team when these two teams step on the field at Bright House Networks Stadium in a primetime setting.

The question is, unlike the previous game against UConn, will UCF act like it?