Jerry Greene - Orlando Sentinel, January 31st 2007

Hey, Golden Knights, clear off your bulletin board so that you’ll have room for this:

“Every coach in Conference USA would trade his starting five for the second five of Memphis.” — Gary Parrish, CBS Sportsline college basketball columnist, during Keep’n Score Tuesday on 740 the Team.

Any supporter of the UCF men’s basketball program is welcome to use that as ammunition going into tonight’s home clash with Memphis, the clear-cut leader in Conference USA and No. 11 team in the land.

And the supporters will be hanging from the rafters. Sold out days ago, it’s likely that the all-time largest announced crowd of 4,737 will fall. Coincidentally, that record was set on the same calendar date, Jan. 31, three years ago against Troy.

If new-found fans need instructions in how to cheer (and heckle), they should look immediately behind the Memphis bench for the men and women wearing the gold or yellow T-shirts that proudly proclaim they are members of Kirk’s Jerks.

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Acclaimed author John Calipari visits UCF on Wednesday with his Memphis Tigers squad to face the Golden Knights in a C-USA matchup. A sell-out crowd is expected as Memphis enters ranked #11 nationally. According to Wikipedia, Calipari was inducted into the prestigious Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in 2004, with other notable inductees such as Brian Boitano, Jennifer Capriati, and Lou Ferrigno.

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Knights win @ UTEP for a much needed win by 3 points, and return home wednesday to face ranked Memphis.

It’s ugly in Houston as UCF falls to 3-2 in conference in a game where everything went wrong in the second half. Knights squander a 22 point lead, and UCF fans on the internet everywhere kick their dogs and yell at their kids. Oh well guys, you’ll have to go back to writing e-mails to newspapers and ignoring your gator friends when they make fun of you since you don’t have anything to brag about. The good news is that it happened in Texas, and as we know, everything is bigger in Texas. Kirk’s squad will have to regroup like the last time they blew a huge lead, and get UTEP on Saturday.

From UCF Athletics press release

Knights improve to 14-4 and 3-1 in conference play, as they knock off Rice and the Nation’s 2nd leading scorer. Read the Jerk Report for Full details on the victory. Knights now head for Texas looking for at least a split on the road.

Knights improve to 2-1 in C-USA action, winning at home over a solid SMU team. UCF will face Rice at home on Saturday night in an attempt to go 10 games over .500. Everyone was dressed casual as Kirk was handed a check after the game to continue coaching as long as he wanted, and we decided 10.3 Million should cover that.

Kirk is now 114-57 over the last 5+ seasons of UCF basketball, including two NCAA tournament appearances and a transition from A-Sun to Conference USA, which is like going from majoring in Education to majoring in Molecular Microbiology and not skipping a beat with your GPA.

While we were gone over the holidays, we lost to Colorado and beat SDSU. Tonight, conference play began with a tough late game break down againts UAB, as UCF fell to 11-4, 0-1. UCF looks to rebound at Marshall this weekend before coming home next week.