Last Stand for UCF Tonight at Memphis

A funny thing happened on the way to the FedEx Forum.

Tonight was supposed to be a watershed moment for the UCF Basketball program; a night to display their new found excellence and dethrone the reigning standard bearers in their own gym.  Tonight was a night to bring their shiny national ranking and validate it in a game they expected, not hoped, they could win.

Um, yeah.  Not quite how it unfolded.

Losing four games in Conference USA is no shame this year.  This is not the "Memphis and the 13 Dwarfs" of years past.  Right now six teams in C-USA are in the Top 72 in the RPI polls.  It's a solid league from top to near bottom.

The problem for UCF?  Losing four in a row.  Including two at home. Badly and embarrassingly.  Suffice it to say that East Carolina and Rice are not two of the aforementioned six.  The performance has dropped the Knights all the way down to last place in the league with a trip to big bad Memphis no longer a coronation but instead a hopefully valiant last stand.

Do the Knights have a shot tonight against Josh Pastner's Tigers?  Sure, but not a good one.  Memphis isn't the team they were in years past, but let's face it, UCF isn't the team Knights fans wanted to believe they were either.  The Knights enter tonight as a prohibitive underdog, a disappointing, albeit more familiar role.

It's been that kind of two weeks for UCF.

The good news is it's a role the Knights play well.  They had no trouble riding the emotional crest of over-achievement.  It was the games they were supposed to win that proved troublesome.

Tonight, the swell of attention and congratulations has long faded and UCF gets its chance to once again play David to Memphis's ever-looming Goliath.  For UCF's sake, lets hope the Knights remember what it is like to fight windmills without dwelling on all that was lost in the past two weeks' stumbles.

Yes, tonight UCF once again gets their chance to attempt the impossible.  But unfortunately, no matter how the game finishes, even an impossible victory will feel a little disappointing contrasted against the possible of just a few weeks ago...