The UCF Knights lost to the UCLA Bruins in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Friday in Philadelphia
Now, UCF Knights coach Johnny Dawkins can reflect on the season.
He never had time to think about it during the magic run to the NCAA Tournament looked back after the loss to the UCLA Bruins in the first round Friday.
"I thought our guys did a really good job of fighting and putting ourselves in position to maybe come back," Dawkins said. "But at the end of the day, they made the plays they needed to make and that's what March Madness is about. And we have to learn from this going forward. "
The goal is to build momentum off this. The Knights made the Tournament for the first time since 2019. Dawkins would like to be in contention annually.
"It's a bitter feeling," Dawkins said. "And so obviously when it's the spring and the summer, there are things you're gonna reflect during the season and you're gonna look back at the NCAA tournament and you're going to look back and, okay, what could we have done better? How can we continue to improve? How can we move the program forward? Those are things that we're going to study as a staff and with the personnel that we'll have, as we try to move forward."
The run has allowed Dawkins to go from some questioning his job status at the beginning of the season to now looking at him as the future of the program. The small taste of success is making him even more hungry to turn UCF into a constant winner.
"It's motivation. It's motivation," Dawkins said. "These guys are all competitors. The guys we've had in that locker room this year were very competitive and they were motivated by a lot of things. They were motivated by, you know, the things that they mentioned earlier about no one believed that we could be here but ourselves, you know, and that's all it took was our guys believing and our staff believing and we were able to accomplish something pretty special. So, that's the approach we're going to take. The guys, the foundation is laid and now how do we move forward? How do we get better? We don't want to stay the same. How do we improve? How do we move forward together, is what we're going to try to do."
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Shandel Richardson is the publisher of UCFRoundtable. He can be reached at shandelrich@gmail.com