Donnie Jones Fired by UCF: Latest Details, Comments and Reaction

The Central Florida Knights men's basketball team fired head coach Donnie Jones on Thursday, according to CBS Sports' Ryan Bass. The school confirmed the news.

Word of Jones' dismissal trickled out just hours after UCF was bounced in the first round of the AAC tournament by Tulane, 65-63. 

During his sixth season with the program, the Knights went 12-18, including a 6-12 record in American Athletic Conference play, en route to an eighth-place finish ahead of only the East Carolina Pirates, South Florida Bulls and Tulane Green Wave.

Jones was hired prior to the 2010-11 campaign, and his tenure started off in encouraging fashion as UCF went 21-12 while ranking as high as 19th in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, per Sports-Reference.com. 

The Knights followed that performance up by posting a 22-11 record the next season and then a 20-11 mark during the 2012-13 slate, but the program's production nosedived from that point forward. 

Season	Record
2010-11	21-12
2011-12	22-11
2012-13	20-11
2013-14	13-18
2014-15	12-18
2015-16	12-17

Not only did UCF fail to qualify for the NCAA tournament during Jones' tenure, but the team failed to top 14 wins during each of his final three seasons on the bench. 

With Jones now out of the picture, and UCF looking to start anew, the Knights' athletic department will need to take a step back and evaluate how the program can make strides as it seeks to return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2005. 

But in order to entertain thoughts of competing with perennial AAC powers such as Temple, UConn, SMU and Cincinnati, UCF will need to maintain a realistic vision that prioritizes steady improvement and the development of a winning culture.