- UCF narrowly defeated Utah 73-71 after Themus Fulks' game-winning free throws.
- Utah's Don McHenry tied the game with three free throws in the final seconds.
- Utah's Seydou Traore's late foul led to Fulks' decisive free throws for UCF.
SALT LAKE CITY — Facing a 3-point deficit with 13.1 seconds left to play, Utah's Don McHenry raised up and attempted a corner 3-pointer Saturday night.
His UCF defender fouled him on the attempt and sent McHenry to the free-throw line for a chance to tie the game. McHenry hit the first two free-throw attempts and Knights head coach Johnny Dawkins called a timeout to settle his team before they could have a potential game-winning attempt.
"We just wanted to make sure we called time out, talk about exactly what we wanted to run and make sure we settled our guys down, because this game had been going back and forth. ... I just wanted our guys ready to settle down," Dawkins said.
McHenry came back to the line after the timeout and calmly drained the third free throw to tie the game, even after a UCF player attempted to get into his head as he walked to the charity stripe.
With the clocking running down, Utah's Seydou Traore attempted to foul Themus Fulks before he could get into shooting territory, but the foul attempt came a little later than expected and the refs failed to blow the whistle until after Fulks seemingly attempted a shot — a controversial moment that left Huntsman Center fans booing for sending Fulks to the free-throw line.
Fulks drained both attempts, and an ensuing Utah attempt by Terrence Brown, who scored a team-high 21 points, went long to give UCF a 73-71 win on the road.
"I'll take the blame on that because we had a foul, and then, obviously, don't want to found that late," Utah head coach Alex Jensen said. "And I feel bad for Seydou, because I think we put him in a bad spot. We told the ref, we're trying to foul
The plan was to foul with about 7-8 seconds left and force UCF (19-7, 8-6 Big 12) to take the ball out from the sideline.
But the foul wasn't Jensen's biggest concern in a game where UCF scored 18 points off 11 Utah (10-17, 2-12 Big 12) turnovers. It wasn't necessarily a high number of turnovers, but several were unforced, bad passes that were easily picked off and converted into points on the other end.
In the end, the effort from the Runnin' Utes was an improvement from previous games this season, but it was a game the team said was disappointing because it had a chance to win against a potential NCAA Tournament team.
"It just hurts to lose a game that you know you can win." McHenry said. "It didn't happen a bunch of times, but the feeling right now for me is just wishing we could take a couple plays back, because we was there and we could have won that game."
For Jensen, though, he said he's "getting sick of the moral victories" of being close and finding different ways to lose the game.
"It's hard, because I think we're better than our record," Jensen said.
McHenry finished the night with 19 points on four 3-pointers, including one from the corner with 55.2 seconds left to tie the game, while Keanu Dawes had a double-double of 15 points and 12 rebounds.
The Knights, who were without their leading scorer Riley Kugel, were led in scoring by Fulks, who finished with 24 points on 11-of-24 shooting. Jordan Burks added 14 points and four rebounds.
