UCF set to take on Michigan
The UCF men’s basketball team has not stepped on a court to face an opponent in a week but that’s exactly what the Knights will do Thursday at Addition Financial Arena against the Michigan Wolverines.
UCF was scheduled to face Florida State in Sunrise on Dec. 18 but the game was canceled due to COVID-19 issues within the Seminoles program.
While unfortunate, the cancellation was nothing new for Knights coach Johnny Dawkins. UCF dealt with multiple stoppages related to the pandemic last season, which this time around felt like a moment of déjà vu.
“It was like, ‘OK, here we go,’ but the thing that’s different is because of what we went through last year, I think we learned a little bit about best practices and things to do,” Dawkins told the Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday. “Last year it was so new that nobody had experienced it before in our lifetime.”
“Now since we’ve all experienced it, you know the best things to do to try to mitigate the risk for our student-athletes and ourselves,” Dawkins added.
The Knights (8-2) return to the court with a tough task in front of them. Coming into the season, Michigan was ranked as high as sixth in the country in the AP Top 25, but after dropping four games through the first two months of the season, the Wolverines (7-4) have fallen out of the top 25.
“It’s exciting for our guys to have a chance to play a team that they know was probably a hair’s length away from being a Final Four team last year,” Dawkins said. “They were playing that well.”
The Wolverines lost by 2 to UCLA in the Elite Eight but this year return 7-foot-1 center Hunter Dickinson, who was a big part of the NCAA run.
“Dickinson is one of the best low-post players in the country,” Dawkins said. “He averaged about a double-double last year. He’s a heck of a talent. They have a great ability to play really good basketball inside and outside.”
Dawkins said the Knights tried their hardest to schedule a replacement game in South Florida, calling multiple programs to see if anyone else needed an opponent. The Knights were unable to find anyone.
“Unfortunately due to conflicts of schedule or differ
ent games needed or the flight may have been too long ... there were a lot of different reasons why people couldn’t play and I understand that,” Dawkins said. “It just didn’t work out.”
The delay in games impacted the flow of day-to-day practices and workouts, Dawkins said.
“Once the season starts, you get in the rhythm of playing games, and it kind of throws you out of rhythm a little bit when you have those types of stoppages, but it’s understandable because we’re going through this pandemic,” Dawkins said.
After the Knights took a break to celebrate Christmas with family, Dawkins held a minicamp of sorts when everyone returned to Orlando.
“When we got back, we refocused and started working on our fundamentals and things we need to improve on offensively and defensively,” he said.
Now back and set to face Michigan, Dawkins understands the challenge as the Knights close out their non-conference schedule. Last year in Ann Arbor, Michigan beat UCF 80-58.
“They play with a lot of length and a lot of size,” Dawkins said. “They’re very experienced in the backcourt.”