The Knights vaulted themselves into Saturday night’s championship game of the C-USA Championship by playing some of its best basketball of the season in an 81-63 defeat of rival Memphis in semifinal play.<\/p>\n
Second-seeded Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½, 21-10 and winners of 10 games in a row, will face the winner of the Houston-Tulane game on Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET. Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ beat Tulane 73-69 in overtime on Feb. 17, but lost to top-seeded Houston (16-0 in conference play this season) 71-68 on Jan. 27.<\/p>\n
The Knights won the C-USA championship in 2009 and are hoping to repeat the feat for a second time in three seasons.<\/p>\n
Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ hit 42.1 percent of its shots, a big improvement over the 32 percent it shot on Thursday. The Knights also set a season high with 11 made 3-pointers on 20 attempts.<\/p>\n
Senior guard Chelsie Wiley, who struggled mightily with her shot on Thursday, scored 21 points. A day after missing 10 of 11 shots, she made six of 12 shots and four 3-pointers to spark Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½’s offense. She needs one more 3-pointer to tie the all-time school-record for threes in a career (213) set by Francine Houston from 2004-07.<\/p>\n
Junior forward Ashia Kelly, who sparked Thursday’s stirring second-half rally with her energy and defense, hit three 3-pointers in the first half and scored 12 points. Kelly, who averaged just 4.4 points this season made a career-best four 3-pointers when the Memphis defense sagged off of her to defend against Wiley and D’Nay Daniels (16 points and 11 rebounds).<\/p>\n
Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ led by as much as 22 points (38-16) early in the first half against a Memphis team built around defense and rebounding. Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ dominated the boards early on, holding a 24-14 edge on the glass. And for the game, Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ outrebounded the Tigers (21-11) 45-34.<\/p>\n
The Knights are now 9-2 when scoring at least 70 points and 3-0 when hitting the 80-point mark. Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ is also 18-3 when leading at the half.<\/p>\n
Memphis had been 13-1 this season when holding foes under 60 points, but Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ exceeded that mark by the 11-minute mark of the second half.<\/p>\n
Clearly inspired by its first-day struggles in the Conference USA tournament, Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ came out inspired on Friday with arguably its best half of the season and led Memphis 45-29 at intermission.<\/p>\n
The Knights, who needed a 15-point rally to defeat UAB on Thursday, shot 50 percent in the first half and made seven of 10 3-point shots to take a commanding lead.<\/p>\n
The Knights’ only flaws in the first half were their nine missed free throws and 10 turnovers. Senior forward D’Nay Daniels (seven points) ended the half fittingly enough with a streaking layup to boost the Knights’ advantage back up to 16 points.<\/p>\n
Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ came out locked in from the start of the game, shooting the ball early on as well as it has at any point this season. Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ made its first five shots and four 3-pointers to race to a 15-4 lead.<\/p>\n
By the 8-minute mark of the first half, Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½ shockingly led 28-12 – nearly the same score (27-12) that they trailed by at halftime on Thursday against UAB.<\/p>\n
The Knights had 12 points in the first 2:51 of Friday’s game – as many as they had in Thursday’s forgettable first half.<\/p>\n
John Denton’s Knights Insider appears on Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½Athletics.com several times a week. E-mail John at jdenton@athletics.ucf.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Knights vaulted themselves into Saturday night’s championship game of the C-USA Championship by playing some of its best basketball of the season in an 81-63 defeat of rival Memphis in semifinal play. Second-seeded Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½, 21-10 and winners of 10 games in a row, will face the winner of the Houston-Tulane game on Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET. Â鶹ӳ»´«Ã½…","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":21072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[835,1141,2535,5198],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-21071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-chelsie-wiley","tag-dnay-daniels","tag-joi-williams","tag-womens-basketball"],"yoast_head":"\n