At the 7:50 mark, Darren Stoltzfus (WESH) asked:
Coach, in so many ways, you outperformed expectations this year. You had so many big wins, but then the way it ends, do you feel like you put together a solid enough performance to say, hey, we want to be back here next year in the same thing? Obviously, you're still on a contract, but do you feel like you put on paper what you wanted to say I need to be here next year?
Johnny Dawkins:
"You know, that's up to everyone to make that decision. You know me, I'm excited. I expect to be back here."
Jaylin Sellers interjects:
"He did."
Johnny Dawkins continues:
"I'm excited. I expect to be back here. You know, I loved coaching UCF from day one. You guys all know that. And I'm always going to pour my whole heart into this university because they gave me a chance to be the coach here.
"So for me, no question, I'm excited to get started. I think the administration, I think everyone believes in me and what we're doing here. And yeah, it's never going to end right for you no matter what, unless you win the championship.
"So whether you won the league championship or the conference championship in the tournament or this tournament championship, it's only going to end one way or another. You're either going to win the whole thing or you're going to get beat by someone along the way and that's going to be ending your season.
"And unfortunately, we got beat and that's ending our season. But I think our guys gave a great effort. We can compete against the best teams in the country on a nightly basis.
"I think we've shown that. Even tonight, I didn't think we played a great basketball game and we still had a chance to come in down the stretch of this game, still a two-point game with about six or seven minutes to go in the game after being down 15.
"So I think our guys have shown that they have fight, they have character, and that they're being coached hard enough to go out there and compete like that."
