The University of Central Florida Golden Knights continue with C-USA play Wednesday night on the road in Huntington, WV against the Marshall University Thundering Herd. The Golden Knights suffered a 19-14 loss to Southern Miss Tuesday, September 26th to go 1-3 straight up (SU) but UCF backers cashed as the Golden Knights covered the +6 -point line against the spread (ATS) with the five point loss. The game, to be televised on ESPN2, will kickoff at 7:30 p.m. (EDT) and will be the league opener for the Thundering Herd.
Winless against NCAA Div-1A competition (0-3) Marshall is 1-3 on the season with its lone victory over Div 1-AA Hofstra (Sept 9). Marshall is 0-3 ATS, failing to cover +2 ½ against West Virginia, +8 ½ at Kansas State and +20 to Tennessee.
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The Thundering Herd will be looking to start the conference portion of its schedule off on the right foot against a UCF (1-3, 0-1 C-USA) program that has quickly become a rival. The two schools have met every year since 2002 when UCF joined the Mid-American Conference and Marshall leads the series 3-1. Both schools left the MAC to join C-USA in 2005, and UCF picked up its first victory over the Thundering Herd, 23-13, in Orlando last season. That win ended a 17-game winless streak and helped propel the Golden Knights on to a 7-1 conference record and a berth in the inaugural Conference USA Championship game.
The Thundering Herd is definitely battle tested following a September schedule that featured road games at #4 West Virginia, Big 12 member Kansas State, and #15 Tennessee.
The Golden Knights opened the year with a win over Villanova, before losing at nationally ranked Florida and then at home to rival South Florida and USM.
The game matches two of the top running backs in Conference USA against each other in Marshall junior Ahmad Bradshaw and UCF sophomore Kevin Smith. Bradshaw, a second-team All C-USA pick last season, currently ranks second in the league with 87.2 yards per game, while Smith ranks seventh with nearly 60 ypg.
Wednesday night's contest also pits two Orlando area quarterbacks against one another. Marshall junior signal caller Bernard Morris and UCF senior quarterback Stephen Moffet. Morris played high school football in the shadow of the Citrus Bowl at Jones High, while Moffet was a standout at Winter Park High.
In making preparations for the trip north UCA head coach George O’Leary commented on making the trip north for his Golden Knights. "I am looking forward to this game. I really like games on weekday nights,” O’Leary said. “The players have to get on the plane and have to play. The only thing that I have to be concerned about is the crowd noise and how some of the younger kids react to it. We all have been to major stadiums now, so we know how to deal with it. The biggest thing that I look at is playing at night and playing away. A lot of the players have already been up there [Marshall], so they know the preparations that are going into this game. It should be a great crowd and great electricity for the game. All of our players are looking forward to playing the game."
