Knights overwhelm Owls, 14-3

UCF captured its 12th straight non-conference game on Tuesday night

After dropping two of three to Memphis over the weekend, UCF continued its solid play out of Conference USA by posting a 14-3 blowout win over Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton on Tuesday night.

FAU (29-16, 17-7), which sits in first-place in the very strong Sun Belt Conference, had won 11 of its last 12 games coming in.

The Owls opened with two in the bottom of the first, but the Golden Knights responded with two in their half of the second and didn’t look back.

UCF pushed three more across in the third when they combined three singles with a pair of walks to make the score 5-2.

FAU did take advantage of a pair of walks in the fourth to cut its deficit to two at 5-3, but UCF blew it open in the sixth when it scored six runs on five hits. All six runs were plated via extra base hits. Ronnie Richardson drove home the first two runs of the frame with a triple. Shortstop Darnell Sweeney followed with an RBI double before Jonathan Griffin delivered a knockout punch with a three-run blast to make it 11-3.

The Golden Knights tallied 19 hits off seven FAU pitchers.

Senior left fielder Chris Duffy reached base in all five of his plate appearances. He was 2-for-2 with two singles, walked twice and was hit once.

Chase Bradford, who came on in relief of starter Alex Besaw in the second, allowed just one run in five innings to improve his record to 4-3.

UCF will now have a week off before resuming action on May 11 when it will play the first of two mid-week games against Jacksonville.