FGCU Basketball Earns ‘Coach of the Year,’ ‘Player of the Year’ Honors

Joe Dooley earned ASUN Coach of the Year for the second-straight year after leading the FGCU Men’s Basketball team to their second-straight outright regular season title.

Eagles Senior guard Brandon Goodwin earned the conference’s top honor of ASUN Player of the Year.

Goodwin is averaging 18.4 points per game and is joined by teammate Zach Johnson on the ASUN First Team, becoming the second pair of FGCU teammates to both be named to the team in the same year.

Goodwin said his strongest support on the court and biggest fan is his mother.

“She watches every game, and whether I have 5 points or 30… she’s always there to support me and keep my spirits up high,” Goodwin said.

Joe Dooley said there was never a point this season when he stopped believing his team would push to postseason play.

“We knew we could be pretty good,” Dooley said. “It’s a good accomplishment by our guys and now it’s time for the postseason.”

The 12-2 Eagles will host a 2-12 USC Upstate team in Monday’s ASUN quarterfinals after already beating the Spartans twice during regular season, but Dooley said there’s still work ahead for his team to advance to the semifinals, starting with the USC Upstate game.

“They had us down 18. We put ourselves in harms way. We were terrible in transition defense, our ball screen defense was bad, second half was much better… so there’s obviously some match ups we have to be concerned with. They’ve got four guys and double figure points, they lead the league in offensive rebounding. We got some things to work on,” Dooley said of Monday’s matchup.

FGCU tips against USC Upstate starting at 7 p.m. Feb. 26 in Alico Arena. Stay with WINK Sports for your latest news from Dunk City.