{"id":148477,"date":"2026-02-09T02:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/148477\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T02:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:53:07","slug":"knights-dont-have-enough-to-prevail-in-cincinnati-orlando-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/148477\/","title":{"rendered":"Knights don\u2019t have enough to prevail in Cincinnati \u2013 Orlando Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CINCINNATI \u2014 Baba Miller had 17 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists while Olympia High alum Jizzle James scored 11 of his 15 points in the second half as Cincinnati beat <a href=\"https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/2026\/02\/04\/knights-cant-keep-up-at-no-8-houston\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UCF<\/a> 92-72 on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Erstwhile Knights big man Moustapha Thiam also scored 15 points for Cincinnati (12-12, 4-7 Big 12), Jalen Celestine added 14 and Day Day Thomas 11.<\/p>\n<p>The Bearcats, who went into the game shooting 41.7% from the field (worst in the Big 12 and No. 327 nationally) this season, shot a season-high 59% (33 of 56) and scored at least 90 points for just the third time this season.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Johnson had 16 points plus 6 assists and Jordan Burks also scored 16 for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/2026\/02\/02\/ucf-knights-mens-basketball-fails-to-crack-top-25-despite-win-over-texas-tech-red-raiders\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">UCF<\/a> (17-6, 6-5).<\/p>\n<p>Jamichael Stillwell finished with 14 points plus 9 rebounds while Dr. Phillips alum Riley Kugel added 10 points.<\/p>\n<p>The Knights made just 1 of 11 from the field to close the first half and went scoreless for the final three-plus minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Cincinnati scored 14 of the final 16 points, capped when Celestine made back-to-back 3-pointers that made it 40-28 at halftime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to keep working,\u201d UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said. \u201cWe need to be getting better every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Bearcats opened the second half with a 9-0 run to take their biggest lead at 49-28 with 18:13 left.<\/p>\n<p>Devan Cambridge and Johnson each hit from behind the arc in 20-6 run that culminated when George Beale Jr. made 3s 27 seconds apart to trim UCF\u2019s deficit to 62-56 with 9:33 left.<\/p>\n<p>Thiam answered with a jumper, James hit a 3 and made two free throws, and Thiam threw down a dunk that pushed the lead to 15 less than two minutes later.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>UCF: Hosts West Virginia on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Cincinnati: Plays Wednesday at Kansas State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI \u2014 Baba Miller had 17 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists while Olympia High alum Jizzle James&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[111,28,114,1335,139,141,140,110,3865],"class_list":{"0":"post-148477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-college-sports","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-orange-county","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ucf-knights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}