The Jacksonville Dolphins play in one of college basketball's most storied small gyms, in a city with an outsized hoops history, for a program whose greatest team nearly won it all. The 1969–70 Dolphins — led by the great Artis Gilmore and Rex Morgan under coach Joe Williams — reached the NCAA championship game, falling only to UCLA's dynasty. That run remains the north star for everything Jacksonville basketball has done since: a reminder that a program from a 2,800-seat Swisher Gymnasium can stand on the sport's biggest stage.
The modern era belongs to Jordan Mincy, who enters his sixth season in 2026–27 as the program's seventh-winningest coach (81 wins, eight shy of sixth all-time). Mincy — a former assistant at Florida, where he recruited and developed under Billy Donovan and Mike White — arrived with a defensive reputation and delivered immediate electricity: a 22–10 debut season in 2021–22, a second-place ASUN finish, and a trip to the league championship game. The Dolphins reached the ASUN quarterfinals in three of his first four seasons and earned a 2025 College Basketball Invitational bid, the school's first postseason appearance since 2016–17.
But the last two seasons tested everyone's patience. The 2025–26 Dolphins finished 12–20 (7–11 ASUN) despite some genuinely wild highlights: a sweep of the River City Rumble rivalry against North Florida (outscoring the Ospreys 148–117 across two games), the two highest-scoring games in program history (132 and 122 points in non-conference play), a first-ever win over VMI sealed by a near-buzzer-beater that made SportsCenter's Top 10, and ASUN All-Freshman honors for guard Hayden Wood — the second straight year a Mincy freshman made the team. Mincy himself was blunt about the roster math afterward, admitting he "didn't necessarily do a great job of acquiring talent" in the portal and vowing a course correction built on known commodities rather than developmental gambles.
That correction is the story of the 2026–27 season. Only 25.8 percent of last season's minutes return, and the Dolphins overhauled the roster with 11 newcomers — six of them proven portal producers. The headliners: Caleb Williams, the Lafayette transfer and All-Patriot League selection who averaged 15.6 points a game (more than half his shots from three) and whose father and brother both played for JU; Jamie Phillips Jr., the 6-5 wing who started 41 games at Stetson and averaged 16 a night; 6-10 Nehemiah Turner, the high-major transfer from Minnesota; Jaden Newell from Georgia; James Morrow from South Carolina State; and Rex Stirling from Wofford. "We wanted to make sure we had a bunch of knowns," Mincy said. "Last year, we had a bunch of unknowns and we didn't know how good guys were. There wasn't video to back up who they were."
The schedule wastes no time testing the rebuild. Jacksonville opens November 2 at home against Paine College, then makes the short trip to Gainesville on November 5 to face Florida — Mincy's former program, now the reigning national champion and SEC regular-season champion. The Dolphins last won in Alachua County in 2010. From there the non-conference slate stretches to Texas, California, and Indiana before ASUN play, where the league's parity — and some of the nation's best small gyms — makes every road trip a grind.
What gives Mincy believers hope is the track record beneath the recent frustration. His teams have consistently outperformed on the defensive end — by analytics, one of the better defensive overachievers in the conference — and his reputation was built on that side of the ball. Wood, now a sophomore, is a legitimate building block: an All-Freshman guard who accounted for over a quarter of the team's three-point makes last season. If the portal veterans defend the way Mincy's best teams have, and the offense finds even average efficiency, Jacksonville's ceiling in the ASUN is a home playoff game and another March run — the kind of season that made 2021–22 feel like the start of something.
Swisher Gymnasium remains one of the sport's great intimate venues — a bandbox where the Dolphins have always played bigger than their budget. The Gilmore-era banners watch over everything. Fifty-six years after Jacksonville played for a national title, the program is still chasing that feeling. With a coach who knows what winning here looks like, a roster full of players with something to prove, and a rivalry with North Florida that never needs extra motivation, the Dolphins enter 2026–27 with the one thing last season lacked: a plan that matches the ambition.
The pieces fit a clear archetype. Caleb Williams isn't just a scorer — he's a 57-game starter at Lafayette who chose Jacksonville partly because the program is in his blood, and Mincy has said he "missed the boat" on him out of high school the first time around. Jamie Phillips Jr. gives the Dolphins a proven wing creator who has produced in this exact league footprint at Stetson. And the frontcourt finally has real size: Turner's 6-10 frame, Morrow's physicality, and Stirling's stretch ability mean Jacksonville won't get bullied on the glass the way it did a year ago. In the ASUN — a league where Lipscomb, North Alabama, and Florida Gulf Coast have all taken turns at the top — the gap between fourth and tenth is often just a couple of close losses. The Dolphins lost plenty of those last season. Flip them, and the whole narrative changes.