UNC will travel south to Orlando to pay a visit to UCF Saturday afternoon. It’s the first time the Tar Heels and Knights have ever met in football.
UCF enters the game with a 2-0 record. The Knights beat Jacksonville State 17-10 in Week 1, North Carolina A&T 68-7 in Week 2 and enjoyed a bye week last weekend. Saturday’s contest is the last of a three-game homestand to open the season.
Here’s more on the Knights:
Head coach: Scott Frost. This is actually the second stint in Orlando for Frost, who also coached the Knights in 2016 and 2017. His first tenure was wildly successful, as Frost transformed UCF into a powerhouse. After a 6-7 season in 2016, the Knights put together an undefeated regular season in 2017 and won the American Athletic Conference title. But despite the 12-0 record, UCF was not invited to the then-four-team College Football Playoff, instead accepting an invitation to the Peach Bowl against No. 7 Auburn. UCF beat the Tigers to conclude a perfect 13-0 season, leading the Knights to claim a national title.
Frost then left Orlando to take the head coaching job at his alma mater, Nebraska. He failed to reach the level of success he had with UCF, as the Cornhuskers never won more than five games in any of his four full seasons in charge. Frost was fired in 2022, just three games into the season (Nebraska was off to a 1-2 start). This is his first season back with the Knights.
Scott Frost led UCF to its best season ever in 2017. (Image via Associated Press/LM Otero)
Finally! As stated above, UNC and UCF have never met in football, though it isn’t for a lack of trying. The Tar Heels and Knights have scheduled each other multiple times, but those games were cancelled by what can be best described as acts of God. In 2018, UCF was slated to visit Kenan Stadium, but saw its visit washed away by the looming threat of Hurricane Florence. The game wasn’t made up. Two years later, the teams were scheduled to meet once again, this time in Orlando. But the COVID pandemic forced teams across the country to reshuffle their schedules, and the meeting between the two schools hit the chopping block.
Quarterback questions: UCF’s starting quarterback is something of a question mark heading into Saturday’s game. Before the season, the Knights named FAU transfer Cam Fancher as their starter, but he exited the opening game early with a back injury. Backup Tayven Jackson stepped in and led UCF to a win in the opener and then a blowout against North Carolina A&T the next week. With the Knights enjoying an open date last weekend, Fancher will have had close to three weeks to recover by Saturday. It’s still unknown whether he will return to action against the Tar Heels.
Ground and pound: The sample size may be small and the competition may be light, but through two games UCF is among the best rushing attacks in college football. The Knights’ 232 rushing yards per game rank No. 20 in the country, ahead of teams like Tennessee, Georgia and Ole Miss. In UCF’s 68-point performance against North Carolina A&T, the Knights rushed for 356 total yards on just 32 carries, which comes out to 11.1 yards per rush. Speedy running back Jaden Nixon needed just four carries to rack up 156 yards and two touchdowns. As a team, seven of UCF’s eight touchdowns came on the ground.
Big trouble: The Big 12 Conference came into existence in 1996, birthed out of the mixing of the former Big Eight and Southwest Conferences. Since then, UNC has not beaten a Big 12 member in football, ever. The Tar Heels have beaten teams that have since joined the Big 12, such as Cincinnati and West Virginia. But against teams which, at the time the game was played, were members of the league, the Tar Heels are winless. Notable losses include a 49-38 loss at the hands of Baylor in the 2015 Russell Athletic Bowl, a 30-10 shellacking against West Virginia in the 2023 Duke’s Mayo Bowl and, of course, the 48-14 loss to TCU to begin the 2025 season.
What are the odds? At the time of publication, UCF is a 6.5-point favorite in the game.
Featured image via UCF Athletics
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