UCF Still Winless, Fall 31-14 to South Carolina

Holloman again intercepted Schneider three plays later and Nunez ended things on the long scoring pass to Cooper.

Lorenzo Nunez ran for 123 yards and passed for two touchdowns as South Carolina beat Central Florida to end a two-game losing streak.

The South Carolina Gamecocks got worked last week by the Georgia Bulldogs and are following that up by trailing the UCF Knights at halftime. & although it was ugly for the 1st 2 half quarters, they came to life after falling behind 14-5 & reeled off 26 unanswered points to win going away. With Orth struggling in his only drive, Spurrier and the USC coaches opted to put Nunez back in and the freshman did not disappoint. “The quarterback’s been making some good plays but there are more bad plays”. Lorenzo Nunez got his first career start and probably quieted most of the fans that were left who did not think he was ready to start. He then lofted a 13 yard pass that August gathered into his hands for a touchdown. His best play of the day was the TD pass he threw to Tre’Quan Smith.

“Except for the picks, I thought [he] handled the game better”, O’Leary said in the release. The Gamecock defense followed that up by forcing the first punt in a first half this season on UCF’s opening drive.

“I did see some growth offensively out there”, O’Leary said in the release. The real difference was field position in the second half because of turnovers. I don’t know that we can assume that we can stop anybody consistently because we haven’t yet.

With 9 Wins and 4 Losses, UCF Knights gained 353.8 total yards on an average including 286.5 passing yards (with 35.3 passing attempts having completion percentage of 59.6) and 67.3 rushing yards per game. Spurrier indicated, however, that the quarterback rotation mightcontinue, unless Nunez quickly shows he can handle things on his own. “We thought he was going to throw it to Pharoh and he saw that nobody was covering August”.

“We call so many runs and options I said ‘you guys are a little more comfortable calling all those than I am, ‘” said Spurrier.

The Gamecocks recovered in the second half behind a strong showing from Nunez and Pharoh Cooper and great defensive plays from TJ Holloman.

UCF was dead last of 127 FBS programs in offense coming in and did nothing to change that in the game’s first 20 minutes with just 32 yards in its first four drives. But a mistake by South Carolina’s best player, Cooper, cranked up the Knights. A back pedaling Cooper would muff the kick, which turned into a Knight recovery at the one-yard line. One play later, Nick Patti rushed in for the score giving the Golden Knights a 7-5 lead with 11:04 to go in the second quarter.