Give Johnny Dawkins a raise and a nice new contract.
And do it now.
I don’t care that UCF lost 75-71 to storied UCLA on Friday night in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. What matters is 10th-seeded UCF was actually in the tournament against UCLA and made the blueblood Bruins sweat until the final buzzer.
Certainly, UCF athletic director Terry Mohjair and the school’s leadership are smart enough to know Dawkins deserves a decent extension. Not a one-year deal. Not a two-year deal. Give him three years. He deserves it.
Dawkins has now completed a decade at UCF, and what he has constructed is not flashy or fragile; it’s steady and stable. This season, the Knights didn’t just survive their ongoing transition into the meat grinder known as Big 12 basketball; they competed in it. They won nine conference games in the toughest league in college basketball. They secured five Quad 1 wins, beating programs like Kansas, Texas Tech, BYU, Cincinnati and Texas A&M. Those aren’t opportunistic victories. They are the product of preparation, belief and execution.
And it all happened in spite of a reality Knight Nation cannot ignore: That their team is operating at a severe financial disadvantage.
In a conference increasingly shaped by NIL spending, UCF sits near the bottom. That’s not an excuse, but it is a constraint. The teams Dawkins faces can retain their own stars and reload rosters annually with high-profile transfers and proven scorers.
Meanwhile, UCF lost Keyshawn Hall, its leading scorer from last year’s team, to Auburn. The Knights lost their leading rebounder and shot-blocker, promising 7-foot-2 freshman Moustapha Thiam, to Cincinnati. Dawkins had to replace his entire roster through the transfer portal, going bargain shopping and identifying players who fit not just a system, but a culture.
All you need to know is this: UCF went on the road near the end of the season and thumped then No. 19-ranked BYU, whose star player AJ Dybantsa reportedly has an NIL deal worth nearly twice as much as UCF’s entire roster.
“Doing more with less” gets thrown around so often it risks losing meaning, but at UCF it is measurable. This isn’t a program winning because it outspends its competition. It’s competing because it outworks, out-prepares and, increasingly, outperforms expectations.
Even in a loss to UCLA, that truth doesn’t change. If anything, it reinforces it. UCLA, after all, is a program with much more tradition, talent and, yes, money than UCF.
Mohajir has already made it clear that discussions about a potential Dawkins’ extension are underway. He has also emphasized a preference for avoiding situations where a coach enters the final year of a contract without clarity. Dawkins is already in that exact scenario, with a non-guaranteed final year looming.
So the question becomes simple: What more does UCF need to see?
If the answer is “a deeper tournament run,” then the evaluation is flawed. Because tournament results are inherently volatile. One bad matchup, one bad shooting night, one unfortunate stretch of five minutes can define a season’s ending. That’s the nature of March. It’s not a reliable measure of program health.
What is reliable is consistency. Growth. Competitiveness in a power conference.
Dawkins has delivered all three.
There’s also something to be said for how he has delivered it. In an era where college sports has become increasingly slimy, Dawkins has maintained a program built on continuity and trust. Players develop under him. They improve. They buy into something larger than themselves. That is harder than ever to achieve, and it speaks to a leadership style that values substance over shortcuts.
He is also, quite simply, respected.
Within the program. Across the conference. Among recruits and their families. Dawkins, a Duke legend, represents UCF with a level of professionalism that aligns with the university’s broader identity. That may not show up in analytics, but it matters in ways that extend beyond wins and losses.
And that’s where this decision becomes bigger than basketball. Giving Dawkins a decent contract extension is not just about rewarding a coach; it’s about affirming a philosophy. It’s about deciding that credibility, stability and integrity are worth investing in; even in a landscape that often prioritizes quick fixes.
There is also a practical reality: coaches who win in difficult circumstances become attractive elsewhere. I’m not saying Johnny Dawkins is looking to leave UCF or has any job offers, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the question for a struggling program to look at what he’s done with less and wonder what he could do with more. At 62, Dawkins is the same age as Curt Cignetti when Cignetti became the head football coach at Indiana. In today’s college sports landscape, proven program-builders don’t stay overlooked forever.
None of this means ignoring areas where UCF could improve and grow. But growth is not linear, and expecting dominance – especially in the Big 12 – is simply unrealistic. What matters is direction.
And UCF’s direction under Dawkins is undeniable.
A four-point loss to bigger, better UCLA program doesn’t change that. It doesn’t erase the victory over tradition-rich Kansas and its bloated basketball budget. It doesn’t diminish the significance of five Quad 1 wins. And it certainly doesn’t negate the reality that UCF hoops is competing in arguably the toughest basketball conference in America, while UCF football is still struggling in a far less demanding Big 12 football landscape.
The fact is, Johnny Dawkins has already done the hard part; he has built a Big 12-caliber program with Big 12-caliber wins while operating with a not-so-Big-12-caliber NIL budget.
Now the only question left is whether UCF is as committed to basketball as its basketball coach has been to UCF.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen
UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins gathers his players against the UCLA Bruins during the second half in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Friday in Philadelphia. (Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)