Aubrey Dawkins
is having fun playing for his father Johnny on the UCF basketball team.
One is the coach and one is the player. One is the father and one is the son.
It’s different, Aubrey Dawkins says of playing for his father, Johnny Dawkins, who is heading into his second season at the helm of the UCF men’s basketball squad.
It’s a relationship that can create various tensions at times for a coach and a player, or even for teammates. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case at UCF.
Johnny and Aubrey Dawkins are enjoying their time together, taking advantage of their first official season at UCF after Aubrey sat out last season after transferring from Michigan.
“It’s different, but it’s fun,” Aubrey Dawkins said Tuesday during the team’s annual media day. “It’s definitely something I’ve never had before. I used to get really nervous when I was little playing in front of him. Now, I do it every day, so it’s nothing for me.”
For Johnny Dawkins, Aubrey is the first of his four children he has had the chance to coach.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to coach him. I never have,” Dawkins said. “I’ve always worked him out and trained him, but I’ve never had the chance to actually coach him on the floor.”
He got his first taste of that last year during his son’s transfer season, when the 6-foot-6, 205-pound junior shooting guard played a big role in practice reps along with four other transfers UCF will rely heavily upon this season.
“I enjoyed it,” the head coach said of last season. “The good thing about him is that he’s a great teammate, which is first and foremost, I think, really important for a head coach, that your son be a great teammate. And he’s a good player, which means he’s able to go out there and contribute.”
Aubrey Dawkins played at Palo Alto (Calif.) High while his father was head coach at Stanford, and spent the 2013-14 season at New Hampton (N.H.) Prep prior to signing with Michigan. He played two seasons for the Wolverines before his dad was hired at UCF last season, prompting his transfer.
So Aubrey spent three years away from the family prior to joining his dad at UCF.
“Having him back home … has been good for us,” Johnny Dawkins said. “He left to go to prep school early, so he’s one of my children who I didn’t have the full experience with.
“So I’m kind of getting that experience on the back end where we have those years that we can kinda reconnect before he heads off for good.”
Aubrey Dawkins is expected to have a big impact for UCF this season. While he averaged just 6.7 points and 2.2 rebounds a game at Michigan in 66 games, he’s only begun to tap in to his full potential. He showed spurts of that with the Wolverines, like the 31-point performance he dropped on Rutgers as a freshman three seasons ago.
When asked what he brings to the table for UCF, the guard was quick to answer. “Shoot the ball,” he said. With UCF losing top 3-point shooter Matt Williams to the NBA’s Miami Heat, there will be plenty of opportunities to shoot the ball. Dawkins, however, said he doesn’t feel any sense of added pressure, even with being the son of the head coach.
“I’m just like everybody else out here. He doesn’t really put any pressure on me, nobody does, which is nice,” Aubrey Dawkins said of his father. “I’m just another guy on the team, which is helpful.”