FORT MYERS — Florida Gulf Coast University could be on the cusp of another huge addition to its basketball program.
Rising junior forward Michael Gilmore (6-10, 215), a Jacksonville native who left VCU early last month after playing in 55 games, including 18 starts, will very soon choose between FGCU, Jacksonville, Miami, Tulane and Valparaiso.
Gilmore has visited all of those schools. He was at FGCU a couple to few weeks back after Ricky Doyle (a rising junior center who started big stretches of both seasons at Michigan and is joining the Eagles) was entertained by the by the coaching staff and some players.
FGCU has a very good shot at getting the former teammate of FGCU rising junior center Antravious Simmons, who transferred from VCU at the break of the 2014-15 season.
The odds-on favorites are Miami and FGCU, both of which offered Gilmore the first time around.
The thought is Jacksonville, like FGCU, an Atlantic Sun program, is on the list out of respect to a quite famous uncle who holds the NBA record for field-goal percentage and NCAA Division I record for rebounds and calls Dolphins games on local radio station WJXL.
The nephew of that Naismith Hall of Famer, Artis Gilmore — who led JU to the 1970 national title game, where the Dolphins lost to UCLA — picked VCU over finalists Miami and Kansas State in 2014, when ESPN called him the 76th-best player in the country and fifth-best in Florida as he came out of Rickards High.
Gilmore is a stretch forward. Think Chase Fieler — who recently helped lead his second overseas pro team to its country’s championship — under Andy Enfield. The 6-8 Fieler was at FGCU for Joe Dooley’s first season of 2013-14, but was pushed more inside, mostly by necessity, that senior campaign.
Should Gilmore come to FGCU, Dooley will not mess with his offensive bread and butters — 3-point shooting and head-down driving.
Defensively, Gilmore — more of a finesse offensive player — is described as very aggressive.
Gilmore averaged 2.0 points and 1.6 rebounds in an average of 6.3 minutes for Shaka Smart as a VCU freshman. After Smart took over at Texas, Gilmore averaged 3.2 points and 2.8 rebounds in 11.5 minutes under Will Wade last season.
He shot 48.2 percent from the field at VCU and made 13 of 34 3-point attempts (38.2 percent). His jumper is a thing of mechanical beauty and he’s pegged as a player with uncanny instincts.
More suited to the full-court game that Smart pushed and Dooley strives for, Gilmore sat six of 10 games under Wade, whose style at VCU has been tabbed Halfcourt Havoc.
But in the NCAA second-round 85-81 loss against second-seeded Oklahoma, Gilmore exploded for the 10th-seeded Rams,
scoring 12 points and pulling down eight rebounds in 20 minutes. He made both field-goal, both 3-point and both free-throw attempts.
As will Doyle — a 6-9, 250-pound old-school back-to-the-basket player from Bishop Verot — Gilmore will sit next season per NCAA transfer rules.
FGCU will lose just two seniors — all-conference starting forward Marc-Eddy Norelia and starting center Demetris Morant — after
next season, when the Eagles are expected to fly past their A-Sun foes and perhaps win an NCAA game.
It’s impossible for the Eagles and their fans to hope for better mid-major replacements than Doyle and Gilmore, who would be a
perfect combination in Dooley’s high-low half-court sets.
It really could happen.
Gilmore doesn’t have a Twitter account under his name and the one he uses is protected. He’s not very active on Facebook. He doesn’t even have a cell or home phone. Still, we’re keeping up as very best we can and will fill you in as soon as possible should Gilmore pick FGCU.
For a lot of reasons — the perfect pairing with Doyle, the Eagles will be absolutely loaded and he’ll be an immediate starter — he should.
Stay tuned.
Dana Caldwell is the NDN beat writer for Florida Gulf Coast University athletics and can be followed on Twitter at @NDN_DCaldwell