![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/fgcu-logo1-300x227.jpg\" "\\"fgcu"){kind=logo}
<\/a>Like most SW Floridians, I was swept up in Dunk City Mania.\u00a0 It was so much fun watching Coach Andy Enfield and his Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles play an exciting brand of basketball and win a couple of games in the NCAA Tournament.\u00a0\u00a0 What made it even better was how humble the team was in accepting the national spotlight.\u00a0 This team epitomizes what the NCAA Tournament used to be all about.\u00a0 These are true student-athletes who will finish their college years by entering the workforce, not the NBA draft.<\/p>\nTwo weeks ago, 99% of the country had never even heard of FGCU.\u00a0 Since the wins over Georgetown and San Diego State, it was tough to turn on network TV and not find a reference to the school.<\/p>\n
While schools like Duke, Louisville, Kansas, and Florida expect to make the Sweet 16 each year and consider it a disappointing season if they don\u2019t, there is something so unique when a \u201cnobody\u201d comes out of nowhere to rattle the status quo.\u00a0\u00a0 The other bigger named schools that have missed out on national-stage success are looking at the FGCU program and trying to figure out how they can copy it. The obvious answer is to throw a bunch of money at Coach Enfield and see if he can cook up another winning formula of players.<\/p>\n
Rumors are already flying that Southern Cal and Minnesota, two schools with past success but not much recently, are ready to offer Enfield a sizable pay increase to leave FGCU for their basketball programs.<\/p>\n
A little over a decade ago I lived in Wilmington, NC, and saw a similar mania sweep through SE NC.\u00a0\u00a0 The University of North Carolina Wilmington Seahawks made it to the Tournament a couple times, even winning a first-round game.\u00a0\u00a0 The entire area was caught up in Seahawk fever.\u00a0\u00a0 While UNCW didn\u2019t win their second round game and get the week of national exposure, the win over Southern Cal turned the spotlight to the school for a few hours.<\/p>\n
The biggest difference between FGCU and UNCW\u2019s success stories is UNCW\u2019s was a couple of years in the building.\u00a0\u00a0 The program was steadily advancing each year and finally made it to the NCAA Tournament.\u00a0\u00a0 FGCU, right now, is a flash-in-the-pan.\u00a0 Six years ago, the program had not played a game at the Division 1 level.\u00a0 Coach Enfield as only had two recruiting classes and it remains to be seen if he has what it takes to build a sustainable program.<\/p>\n
As the bigger schools come along with their money and basketball history, it is my hope that Coach Enfield lets the suitors pitch their woo and lets them move along.\u00a0\u00a0 I have not met Coach Enfield but I get the impression he is a man who is capable of building FGCU into a strong mid-major program that will shake up office pool brackets every couple of years.<\/p>\n
As of now, FGCU will lose two players from this year\u2019s team to graduation \u2013 Sherwood Brown and Eddie Murray.\u00a0 That means the core of the team, a decent recruiting class, and a couple of transfers will make the Eagles favorites to win the Atlantic Sun championship again and make it to the Tournament.<\/p>\n
As someone who has followed smaller college basketball teams for a few years, I know Coach Enfield is going to eventually leave FGCU.\u00a0 It is only a matter of time.\u00a0 That said, I hope he doesn\u2019t leave for a couple of years.\u00a0\u00a0 This season was special, one-of-a-kind.\u00a0\u00a0 But it may have just been a case of being in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n
I would like to see Coach Enfield build the FGCU basketball into a program that reloads after each season, not rebuilds.\u00a0\u00a0 It takes time.\u00a0\u00a0 I believe he has what it takes to build the FGCU program into one that attracts quality student-athletes who will represent the school right, graduate and win most of the time.<\/p>\n
I know it is easy for me to sit here and tell him the right thing to do is to pass up a chance to work at a better-known school, get a significant pay hike, and advance up the coaching hierarchy.\u00a0 But I am sure I am right.<\/p>\n
Chances are you can\u2019t name the coaches who were recently fired from Minnesota, Southern Cal or even UCLA.\u00a0 But you can name the head coach of FGCU, and that says a whole heck of a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jim Clark Like most SW Floridians, I was swept up in Dunk City Mania.\u00a0 It was so much fun watching Coach Andy Enfield and his Florida Gulf Coast University… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,57,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}