Two straight losses, including a 92-72 whipping Sunday at Cincinnati, have UCF looking like the ultimate bubble team when it comes to its NCAA Tournament hopes.

Despite that blowout, the Knights are still on the right side of the bubble, according to most experts, as they prepare for a Saturday night Big 12 home game against West Virginia in Orlando, Fla.

“We’ve just got to keep working,” UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said. “We need to be getting better every day. When you’re in this gauntlet, anything can happen from game to game.”

This time around, “anything” meant allowing Cincinnati to drain 11 of 18 3-pointers and hit 33 of 56 shots overall, an unusually hot shooting performance for a team that usually struggles to score.

But the Knights (17-6, 6-5 Big 12) drew a midweek bye, giving them six days to try to fix a defense that has allowed 83.4 ppg in their last seven games. They will also look to get point guard Themus Fulks back on track after he struggled in 19 scoreless minutes at Cincinnati, missing both his shots and committing two turnovers.

Fulks’ 13.3 points per game are second on the team and his 6.8 assists are 12th in the nation.

West Virginia (15-9, 6-5) needs to get on a late-season run to earn an NCAA berth. It also had a midweek bye after falling 70-63 at home Sunday against then-No. 13 Texas Tech. The Mountaineers lost that one at the 3-point line, going 2 of 22 while the Red Raiders nailed 13 of 24.

First-year coach Ross Hodge said the game’s tone was set early when Texas Tech won a string of loose balls that led to baskets.

“I think if you step on the floor legitimately expecting to win the game, you get more loose balls than your opponent,” he said. “That was the ultimate disappointing part of the game to me.”

Honor Huff is West Virginia’s leading scorer at 15.4 per game, but is coming off a 0-of-8 shooting performance against Texas Tech. He managed six points, all from the foul line.

–Field Level Media

After sitting out against the No. 1 team in the country, Kansas freshman Darryn Peterson will be back in time to face No. 5.

Kansas coach Bill Self told ESPN on Friday that Peterson was “good to go” when the ninth-ranked Jayhawks visit fifth-ranked Iowa State on Saturday.

Peterson sat out with flu-like symptoms on Monday when the Jayhawks hosted No. 1 Arizona. Kansas was able to win without him, handing the Wildcats their first loss of the season, 82-78.

Peterson is considered one of the frontrunners to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft this June, but he has played in just 13 of Kansas’ 24 games due to multiple ailments, including quad and hamstring injuries.

He has averaged 20.5 points and 4.2 rebounds per game while shooting 48.9% from the field and 41.9% from the arc this year. Peterson had 16 points when Kansas took down Iowa State 84-63 back on Jan. 13, marking the Cyclones’ first loss of the season.

–Field Level Media

MILAN, Italy — When Ilia Malinin launched himself into a backflip at the Milan Cortina Olympics, it detonated through the crowd like a firecracker and even brought tennis great Novak Djokovic to his feet with his hands on his head in disbelief.

The 21-year-old double world champion landed the first legal Olympic backflip since American Terry Kubicka in 1976, when he helped clinch gold for the U.S. in the team event in Milan on Sunday.

The crowd will get another chance to see Malinin’s maneuver when he takes the ice for Friday’s men’s free program as the favorite for gold.

The backflip was banned for safety reasons after Kubicka did one at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics.

The maneuver became known as the “Bonaly flip” after Surya Bonaly of France famously thumbed her nose at the International Skating Union’s restrictive rules at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.

Bonaly had sustained a groin injury the day before the free program and knew her quest for a medal was over, and so defiantly unleashed the jump with a one-footed landing.

The ISU removed the somersault ban in June 2024, saying in their meeting agenda: “Somersault type jumps are very spectacular and nowadays it is not logical anymore to include them as illegal movements.”

AERIAL SHOWMANSHIP

Malinin, the self-named “Quad God,” has drawn global attention for his aerial showmanship. He became the first skater to land seven quadruple jumps in a program at the Grand Prix Final in December. He is also the first to land the quadruple Axel in competition, considered the toughest jump in the sport.

The backflip carries no set point value, but it can contribute to Malinin’s component score – known under the old judging system as “artistic impression”.

It also gets a bigger roar from the crowd than his more technically demanding jumps because it plays to pure spectacle in a way quads simply cannot.

“It gets that audience applause, feels really suspenseful and I really just like doing it,” Malinin said last season when he began doing the maneuver.

His programs also include one-handed cartwheels and a “raspberry twist,” another zero-points move in which his body, much like a break dancer’s, rotates in the air horizontally to the ice.

However, the young skater has so far resisted the temptation to land the first quadruple Axel on Olympic ice, saying he is choosing caution over showmanship.

“I’m hoping that I’ll feel good enough to do it (on Friday),” he told reporters on Tuesday. “But of course, I always prioritize health and safety, so I really want to put myself in the right mindset where I’ll feel really confident to go into it and not have that as something that I’m going to risk.”

Malinin takes a score of 108.16 from the short program into Friday’s free skate. Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama is second on 103.07, Adam Siao Him Fa of France is third (102.55).

–Reuters, special to Field Level Media