“It’s an excellent opportunity for us, exposurewise,” he added.

At 4:22 p.m., Enfield met with Pat Pierson, the assistant athletic director for communications, to go over the seating chart and news media obligations. The list of scheduled interviews ran three full pages. Enfield wanted his players in the middle of the shot, with coaches and family and officials on either side.

The doors to the arena opened at 5 p.m., as the players mingled along the baseline. Among them stood Eddie Murray, a senior forward who grew up here, who watched the campus grow from one building in the woods to the current sprawling campus with more than 13,000 students, who can rent wakeboards and sailboats free on campus.

Murray pointed to two turning points on the road to his program’s eight seconds of fame. The first came last year, the first season in which Florida Gulf Coast was eligible for the postseason, when the Eagles lost to top-seeded Belmont in their conference tournament final, one win short of an N.C.A.A. berth. (The university moved to Division I in 2007-8 but underwent a four-year transition period.) The second occurred this season when the Eagles upset Miami and the student section, known as the Dirty Birds, stormed the court.

“I crowd-surfed,” Brown said. “It was awesome. I thought they only did that with rock stars.”

The Eagles won 12 of their final 14 games. They bested Mercer, a budding rival, in the conference tournament final to become the first team this season to secure a berth in the N.C.A.A. tournament. They knocked off Miami, albeit with Hurricanes guard Durand Scott suspended, and led Duke before losing.

Enfield combined all of his influences: from Mike Dunleavy Sr. he borrowed offensive principles, like a fast tempo, with shots preferably taken in the first eight seconds of each possession; from Rick Pitino he took motivational techniques; from Leonard Hamilton he copied defensive philosophy, along with a broader idea of how to build a program, a Hamilton specialty.

“We’re trying to build something that has never been built before,” said Ken Kavanagh, Florida Gulf Coast’s athletic director.