GAINESVILLE — Florida veteran Tyreak Sapp and the struggling defense hadn’t had much to celebrate this season.
But on Sapp’s 22nd birthday he and his teammates welcomed UCF and whooped it up during a one-sided 24-13 win .
With tens of thousands of his closest friends looking Saturday night at the Swamp, Sapp and an inspired front seven staged a sack party. The Gators grounded 6-foot-3, 247-pound quarterback KJ Jefferson five times and sent him home limping a season after he led Arkansas to a stunning upset here with Sapp on the sideline because of a concussion.
“I wanted to make sure he left out of here with a loss, and we wanted to leave him hurting,” he said. “He was holding his knee.”
Knights coach Gus Malzahn , whose team finished with a season-low 273 yards, held his head is frustration after he’d gift-wrapped the Gators momentum. Trailing 7-3, a bold, if not baffling, fourth-down call in Knights territory backfired to open the second quarter.