UCF Athletics
UCF Basketball Head Coach Johnny Dawkins
“As impressive as the progression of our men’s basketball program has been in the last three seasons, it should not come as a surprise to anyone because it’s the very reason we brought Johnny Dawkins to UCF,” said Danny White, UCF's athletic director, in a statement. "And, yet, if you talk to any of our players they would tell you how they also have been impacted significantly by their head coach away from the court."
This comes after Dawkins' third season, in which he led the Knights to a 24-9 and finished 4th in the American Athletic Conference (AAC). At one point over the season, UCF was ranked 25th in the nation.
The Knights advanced to the Round-of-32 in the 2019 NCAA March Madness tournament, where they lost in the finals seconds to the 1st-seeded Duke Blue Devils — Dawkins' college team.
A clip of Dawkins speaking to his team in the locker room after the game went viral on social media.
Johnny Dawkins was drafted 10th overall by the San Antonio Spurs in 1986. After nearly a decade in the NBA, he went back to Duke as an assistant coach. In 2008, Dawkins was hired to coach the Stanford Cardinal, where he put up a 156-115 record and two NIT Championships in eight years there.
In 2016, Dawkins was hired to coach at UCF. He had two seasons of moderate success, making it to the NIT semifinal in his first and posting a 19-13 record in his second, before team's breakthrough campaign in 2018-2019.
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