Duke Blue Devils: UCF hires Johnny Dawkins
UCF has hired Duke Blue Devils star Johnny Dawkins to be its new head basketball coach.
Former Duke Blue Devils star Johnny Dawkins did not remain unemployed long. Just days after being fired as the head coach at Stanford, Dawkins has been hired as the new head coach at Central Florida according to reports by Terrance Harris of the Associated Press.
For Dawkins this means a new opportunity to continue his coaching career. It represents another chance to build up a successful program resume by the time Coach Mike Krzyzewski retires from being the head man at Duke.
That was the plan after all when Dawkins left his position as a Duke assistant to take over the Stanford program. If Dawkins could get Stanford up and winning, then this would be a sign that he was ready to take over Duke. Stanford was a private school with high standards, not unlike Duke.
Dawkins even had a Sweet Sixteen run, but that was all the success he could muster out West. So the plan was derailed. Even now, it is hard to see how he is a more desirable candidate than Tommy Amaker, Jeff Capel, or any of the white Duke guards coaching Power 5 teams.
Yet winning at Central Florida might rewrite the book on that. The longer Coach K holds onto his job, the longer Dawkins has to build some success. That might mean winning at rebuilding UCF, but it also might mean using UCF as a spring board to some bigger program with a higher profile.
UCF certainly has a higher profile now that it has a coach with name recognition. It won’t be easy either since UCF plays in the American Athletic Conference where there is some pretty good competition. There is SMU under Larry Brown, Temple, Connecticut, Memphis, and how could we forget East Carolina as well.
Even with his rebound job, Dawkins is up a hard road if he wants to succeed Coach K. Even if he performs well, I can’t see him being the third phone call that Duke makes in their coaching search.