This was supposed to be a big week for the Jones family. We have seen other coaching brothers make the NCAA tourney in recent years (Archie/Sean Miller, Bobby/Danny Hurley, etc.), but this was going to be the year of the Jones brothers. Yale coach James Jones made the tourney each of the past 2 years after having a legendary upset of Baylor back in 2016, and after 16 years as a head coach his brother Joe finally made it this year with his team at BU. Then the NCAA tourney was canceled and we were left to wonder “what if”. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel begins our 7-part series of Joneses past and present by chatting with Joe about winning the Patriot League tourney last week and the impact of the coronavirus on college basketball.
You played basketball at SUNY-Oswego where you still remain in the top-5 in school history in AST/STL: what is the key to being a good PG, and how did you 1st get into coaching? When I was 17 and preparing to start my freshman year of college I worked at an overnight sports camp as a counselor/coach. I got the coaching bug back then: I can still remember having my 1st practice. I kept going back every summer and loved every minute of it. There are a lot of factors that go into being a good PG but you have to see outside yourself to make the game easier for the people around you. You should be vocal, have a good feel for the game, and understand spacing. You need to be a good connector and keep everyone on the same page. I was a big Magic Johnson fan growing up: I could not emulate him but I took as much as I could from him.
You were an assistant to Jay Wright at Hofstra/Villanova: what makes him such a great coach, and what was the most important thing that you ever learned from him? He is very consistent with his message. He struggled to figure things out as a young guy at the collegiate level but had great confidence in himself and was unwavering in how hard he wanted his team to play. Jay taught me so many lessons but the most important is that he really cares about the people around him: even today he will give me credit for his success at Villanova. He had all the qualities of a special coach even before winning 2 national titles.
You spent 7 years at Columbia before being hired at BU in 2011: how does the Ivy League compare to the Patriot League? The Ivy League has changed a lot since I was there: it is a much more athletic/competitive league. When Harvard/Princeton began to offer more aid money then everyone else followed suit. I think the Patriot League is more competitive from top to bottom: we had more games with a final scoring margin of 1-5 PTS than any other conference in the country.
Walter Whyte missed all of last year due to an ankle injury: how much did you miss him last year, and how much of an impact did he have this year? He was highly missed and we really struggled without him. I think that we were 10-4 in league games when he was healthy as a freshman.
You started 3-7 this season: how were you able to turn things around in December? It was a weird 3-7. We won at South Carolina on a Tuesday in mid-November and flew home that night before flying to West Virginia on Thursday. We did not play well that day, then flew to Mexico and had 3 starters get food poisoning, which really shook us. We were confused and it jolted us, then we went to Binghamton and could not make a single 3 in the 2nd half and lost by 5 PTS in OT. After we beat Dartmouth in mid-December everything shifted and you could see our confidence come back. The trip to Mexico gave us a poor indication of where we were, which really hurt us.
In the Patriot League tourney title game last week Max Mahoney scored a team-high 18 PTS in a 3-PT win at Colgate: how were you able to win on the road against a team that swept you this year while making 4-14 FTs, and what was the feeling like in your locker room afterward? If there is 1 thing that I liked it is that we tried to prepare our guys for what it would feel like. We pumped noise into our practices and talked through what it would feel like when Colgate went on a run and how we needed to stay together after losing our composure in the 1st 2 games. They deserve all the credit for being confident throughout the game. At halftime I went right in and said that I thought we would be right there at the end. It was an awesome feeling after we won: the goal is to make the NCAA tourney and to finally get there is the dream. To see the smiles on their faces made it even better.
Your brother James won the Ivy League regular season title earlier this month as head coach at Yale and was awarded an auto-bid to the NCAA tourney after the Ivy tourney was canceled: how excited was your entire family at the prospect of seeing the rest of college basketball trying to “keep up with the Joneses”?! That was short-lived so I did not get to think about it too much…but it would have been a phenomenal feeling.
What kind of seed do you think that you deserved? To be honest I do not know and have not even thought about it: just being in the tourney was enough for us.
You will lose 1 senior this spring in Mahoney but bring back almost everyone else: how do you like your chances for next season? The goal is always to win the regular season/tourney titles and that will not change. Hopefully the experience this season will help us.
Any thoughts on the impact of the coronavirus on college basketball this month? The big thing is to keep this in perspective. There are more important things going on right now and if we have to put sports on the shelf for a few months that is okay. The world needs to get healthy and we need to fight through this tough time. I feel awful for the seniors who missed out on this opportunity and the teams who would have made it. I have fought off the feelings about us making it and have just been thinking about my colleagues.