UCF Opens Tonight Against the Team Isaiah Malone Just Left: the ASUN's Defensive Player of the Year Debuts Against FGCU
Isaiah Malone was Florida Gulf Coast's family last season — and its best defender, the ASUN Defensive Player of the Year with a league-leading 64 blocks. Tonight at 7 p.m. at Addition Financial Arena, the 6-foot-9 senior makes his UCF debut against the Eagles, in a home opener that also brings back the core of the Knights' first NCAA Tournament team since 2019.
Every transfer portal season produces one awkward opener, and UCF drew it. Isaiah Malone, the 2025-26 ASUN Defensive Player of the Year, makes his Knights debut on Monday night against Florida Gulf Coast — the program he played for last season. The 6-foot-9, 220-pound senior forward from LaGrange, Indiana, joined UCF on April 17 as the Knights' first portal signee of the offseason, after leading the ASUN with 64 blocks and averaging 10.5 points and 5.8 rebounds for the Eagles, on a path that ran through two seasons at Saint Francis, an NAIA program in Indiana, before his jump to Division I.
UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins valued Malone's versatility in the frontcourt, the News-Journal reports — a player the staff believes can work at power forward and as a small-ball center. In the Knights' exhibitions against LSU and Kentucky, Malone hit 7 of 18 field-goal attempts, 4 of 12 from three-point range, and pulled down 12 rebounds. 'I honestly felt good that I was the first one they were looking at,' Malone said of his recruitment, as reported by the News-Journal. 'The relationship, from the jump, I just felt like there was a connection.'
The opener is not a rebuild's first night, whatever the projections say. UCF returns top scorer Riley Kugel, starting center John Bol, three-point specialist Carmelo Pacheco and backup big Elijah Hulsewe among six players back from a 21-win squad that reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019 and posted the program's best Big 12 finish to date, eighth at 9-9 — and is still projected 13th in the league this season. FGCU, in its fifth season under Pat Chambers after a 16-18 year, lost four of the five starters from the team UCF beat 102-80 in Orlando last December. Tip is 7 p.m. Eastern at Addition Financial Arena on ESPN+. The News-Journal's own predictions have the Knights winning, 79-67 and 76-68 in its two picks; the Malone subplot needs no prediction at all — it is the story either way.
