It’s been a week since the UCF men’s basketball team last took the court, when they came away with a 67-56 win on the road against a down-and-out conference opponent. The effort broke a three-game losing streak and credited Kirk Speraw with win No. 275 as head coach of the Knights.

Kirk Speraw (Photo by Scott McCall)

Against East Carolina (7-15 overall, 1-7 Conference USA), junior Taylor Young led the way with a 16-point effort and six assists. Sophomore Isaac Sosa had his best outing in a while by draining four three-pointers – including the 100th of his career – as he finished with 14 points.

A.J. Tyler scored 10 points, grabbed nine rebounds and had four steals while Marcus Jordan scored nine points and also finished with four steals.

The win over the Pirates was just the fifth in the past 15 games for UCF, who improved at the free throw line (15-of-18) and made 8-of-18 shots from long-range.

“We gave a good effort. We finally started to make a few shots,” said Speraw. “Hopefully that will get some confidence to our guys.

“It has been a tough stretch of games. Now we can give them a couple of days [off]. We can work on some things and work on our timing and execution during the course of these next few practices.”

In his 17th season, Speraw moved past Torchy Clark (1969-83) last week as the program’s all-time winningest coach.

Kirk Speraw with Isaac Sosa (Photo by Scott McCall)

“Kirk really does a great job with this program,” UCF Hall of Famer Bo Clark, son of Torchy, said earlier this season after banners where hung at UCF Arena in honor of the Clarks.

On Wednesday, UCF (11-11, 3-5 C-USA) is on the road at Memphis (16-7, 6-2) before hosting Tulane (7-15, 2-7) on Saturday at 4 p.m. and Houston (12-11, 4-5) on Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m.

The Knights are currently sitting at No. 9 in the 12-team C-USA standings.

With a month left in the regular season, look for A.J. Rompza to break into UCF’s top-10 in single-season steals and steals in a career. He is currently averaging 2.8 steals per game, good for seventh-best in the nation.

Freshman Keith Clanton is just three blocked shots from entering the Knights’ single-season list.

Clanton has already climbed to No. 3 on the UCF freshman single-season Division I rebounds list with 141 boards, behind the 268 from Ken Leeks (1990-91) and 163 from Darryl Davis (1991-92).

– More Kirk Speraw at UCF –

Behind the numbers at StatSheet

Kevin Stanley at Bleacher Report

Carl Kotala at Florida Today

David Hall at Sun Journal

Karen V. Contino at Central Florida Lifestyle