ORLANDO, Fla. – It’s that time of year, once again, for college basketball—the time of year where the slates are wiped clean from the regular season and each team from the American Athletic Conference gets a shot at an NCAA tournament berth.
All they have to do is win four games.
The UCF Knights (18-12, 9-9 in AAC) enter the AAC tournament as the six seed and with their second-ever winning record in the American. They’ll take on 11th-seeded East Carolina University in the last game of the first day of the tournament with tipoff set for 9 p.m.
If the Knights win, a matchup with the No. 3-seeded University of Houston awaits them.
For head coach Johnny Dawkins, the team isn’t thinking ahead to its potential next matchup; their focus is on the Pirates on Thursday night.
“I think for us to win the whole thing, we need to look at this as a one-game tournament,” Dawkins said after practice Wednesday. “I don’t think you can perform well in it if you’re looking down the road to who you might play. I think you need to stay locked in on your main opponent, and, for us, that’s ECU.
“Nothing happens if we don’t take care of that opponent, so we have to prepare and play like a one-game series, and that’s what we have to do the entire way.”
UCF and ECU met only once in the regular season, as the Knights took a 59-39 victory on New Year’s Eve to capture their first conference win of the season. In that game, UCF was still missing redshirt junior guard B.J. Taylor, who missed most of the early season with a fractured foot.
Now having played in UCF’s last 13 games, the point guard has been leading the team in scoring with 15.5 points per game. That scoring output will give the Knights a significantly different look on offense compared to when the Knights and Pirates first met.
For the Pirates (10-19, 4-14 in AAC), they finished their season with the second-worst record in the American, beating only the USF Bulls (10-21, 3-15 in AAC). But when it comes to tournament time, Dawkins doesn’t pay attention to the opponent’s record.
“East Carolina’s a good basketball team,” Dawkins said. “They’re dangerous. Like every team in our conference, whether it’s the top or the bottom, the one thing about every team is they kept competing all season long. They have some experienced perimeter players that are really talented, and they have some low-post players that are capable of scoring.
“So, for us, we need to be prepared. It’s going to be very important we know the game plan and we know personnel because they’re a personnel-driven team, and our guys have to be really locked in.”
In the interest of getting his team locked in for a potential tournament run, Dawkins is taking a different approach to getting his team ready to compete. Since the games will be played locally at the Amway Center in downtown Orlando, the drive to the game is only about 30 minutes from UCF’s campus.
But despite the short drive, the Knights coaching staff has decided to stay off-campus in a hotel to get their players fully immersed in the moment.
“We’re not gonna stay on campus,” Dawkins said. “We’ll move into a hotel just like the other teams will. So, they won’t be in their own bed; they’ll be immersed into what’s going on with the AAC tournament.”
Injuries plagued the Knights throughout the season and caused a team that was tagged as a preseason favorite to struggle for a .500 record in conference play.
However, for Dawkins, the adversity his team faced has shown the Knights’ resiliency.
“I think they’re resilient,” he said. “I think they’ve shown that, and they’ve shown that they’re capable of standing up to adversity, and we learned a lot about our team this year. I think what they’ve shown is they have big hearts, and they’re a resilient team. No matter what’s been thrown at them, they’ve managed to shake it off and keep moving forward in a positive direction.”
Taking that mentality into the tournament could help UCF progress into the later rounds of the tournament. However, stiff competition awaits them if they make it far enough.
Houston ranks 21st in the Associated Press Top 25 and the USA TODAY Coaches Poll. Second-seeded Wichita State University is 11th and 14th in the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll, respectively, and the Cincinnati Bearcats are ranked eighth in the country.
“I’m a ‘cup half-full’ guy, not a ‘cup half-empty’ guy; that’s for sure,” Dawkins said. “So I believe in our guys, and I think they believe in themselves, and they believe in us. We think everything’s possible.
“You look around right now in March and see what’s happened in some of the other tournaments. You have some teams that weren’t expected to win it, win it. So we’re one of those programs right now that we think we’re capable of winning. We just need to go out and perform well.”
For more on the Knights, as they prepare for their first game of the American tournament, follow Austin David on Twitter at @AustinDavid22.
