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We start our 2023-24 season reviews with football
The 2023-2024 UCF Knights sports season has (almost) come to an end.
With the athletic year over and the quiet summer months upon us, we’ll all now be looking to next season. But before we do that, we wanted to take a moment and go over this past year.
The entire Banneret staff will be taking a look at every team that represented UCF this past year and will have to try and describe how their seasons went. The only catch, we have to do it in three words or less.
Let’s start here:
Yes I know, this was a bad season for UCF. You can say making a bowl game in your inaugural big 12 season is good. But trust me, this year was a disappointment. Especially to those on the team. That being said, I can’t help but wonder int his season would have been much better if things were different. Would we be better if Boomer didn’t develop the yip’s at the end of the year What happens if they finish the job against Baylor? And then there’s the big one, what if John Rhys Plumlee didn’t get hurt? When he was healthy he was great. If he doesn’t get hurt does the team choke against Baylor? do they upset Oklahoma. do they have abetter showing against Kansas. I’m not saying the team could have won the big 12 title, but I feel like this year could have been so much better.
A bad season? What?!?
I told anyone who would listen that I would be happy if our first Big 12 campaign ended with a .500-or-better regular season and a bowl trip. Mission accomplished! This was the biggest conference jump in the school’s history and I think the results bore that out.
And yet, there were some games we left on the table. We were 4 points from a 9-3 regular season. But that’s the difference between an AAC contender and a Big 12 team: A lack of depth and the jump in competition means you won’t catch the breaks in the Big 12 that you did in the AAC.
Now that we have the recruiting humming and a succession plan at QB, it feels like Gus Malzahn is pushing his chips in on potentially making a run at the Big 12 title as soon as this season. I don’t think he would have if we didn’t at least show that we can compete now.
6-7 is not acceptable. Those are not my words. They are Gus Malzahn’s words, who said as much and has shown that by the changes he made on the coaching and on the roster heading into 2024 season that is setting up to be a boom or bust season.
All three former AAC teams experienced their struggles in the Big 12 this season. Yet, look at what UCF still accomplished: Going into Texas Tech and #6 Oklahoma and losing by a combined three points, and stymieing the premier running back in the conference on the #15 team in the nation and handing them their most lopsided loss of the season.
I don’t see anything like that on Cincinnati’s schedule and Houston’s only highlight was a close call hosting Texas. UCF was able to bounce back from their struggles to a bowl game, which already makes the season successful in the most basic sense, especially for a new kid on the Power 5 block.
The Knights proved that they have what it takes to contend in this conference sooner rather than later. They can belong at the top echelons of the conference, they just needed a few missing pieces, a belief evidenced by Gus Malzahn’s actions in the transfer portal. He wouldn’t be amassing this many talented players if he didn’t think he already had the solid foundation to contend with.
As the voice of reason and therapeutic arm of the KnightShift and KnightShift Live podcasts, I like to think I have less of the fanboy student perspective while also not being a jaded heel that gives a trite response amounting to “We were bad because the coach said so”.
To ignore that UCF with a transfer-rich offensive line, a starting quarterback that missed A LOT of time (and was still injury-limited for about as large a portion), and a first-year defensive coordinator in the first year of a transition away from the Group of Five while traveling more miles to play than any other college in the nation is simply intellectually dishonest.
To also not acknowledge some baffling failures that squandered a chance for a nine-win season would be similarly delusional and frankly something you can equate to a team facing numerous adversities. The thing is in this landscape, win-loss records don’t care about adversity — and neither will the playoff committee if that record isn’t better.
However, this coaching staff has done more than make adjustments. They’ve continued to lift the bar from what they’ve previously reset since coach Malzahn arrived. They continue to be ranked among the top in the Big 12 in recruiting (Not just the “new” Big 12 — the entire thing). They found a quarterback who is more durable than his NFL UDFA predecessor. They’ve upgraded the linebacker corps and prioritized improving stopping the run.
Do I believe that UCF “fan-critics” change their tune if in one of a handful of games they score three more points? Yes.
Do I believe that this coaching staff is going to use that to their advantage to motivate this team? Also yes.
While nothing is guaranteed and it’s still only June — the truth is that the last time a UCF team went 6-7 with a bad loss in a bowl game was in 2016 — the year before this program made special things happen to get them where they are today. And that 2017 team did not have the same potential that this 2024 team does now.
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