By Harry Minium
The coaches and players at Apollo High School in basketball-crazy Owensboro, Ky., knew Jeff Jones would become a coach, and likely a good one, when he was just a 14-year-old high school freshman.
Jones had played in a junior varsity game earlier in the evening, and was getting ready to put on his clothes when varsity coach Wayne Chapman told him to suit up for the varsity game. He came off the bench and led the Eagles to another victory.
That was impressive, but more impressive is what happened at halftime of the varsity game.
Let's set the stage: Chapman played at Western Kentucky and in the American Basketball Association. He would later become head coach at Kentucky Wesleyan and win 128 games and two Division II national championships in five seasons. His son Rex Chapman, went on to star at the University of Kentucky and the NBA.
In short, Chapman had big-time coaching acumen.
Yet at halftime, Chapman was in the locker room, struggling at the chalk board. He'd drawn a new play and no matter how many times he tried explain it, the players couldn't quite grasp it.
Jones was nervous. It was his first varsity game and he was shaking so badly that a set of weights he was leaning up against began to clang so loudly that Chapman looked around to see where the noise was coming from.
Jones disengaged from the weights and politely stepped forward and asked Chapman if he could give the blackboard a shot. Jones then sketched and explained the play in a way everyone could understand.
Chapman and the Eagles sat in stunned silence.
Saturday afternoon, more than four decades after Jones headed to the chalk board, he reached a milestone that few coaches will ever achieve. His Old Dominion University basketball team upended Northeastern, 76-69, in Boston, giving Jones his 500th career coaching victory.
Since basketball became a collegiate sport in 1896, only 119 others won 500 games or more. Jones ranks 25th among active coaches.
He's won 500 of 857 games, giving him a 58.4 percent winning percentage, an impressive fete considering that he spent 13 seasons at American University, a small school with tough academic standards that has traditionally struggled in basketball.
"This couldn't happen to a better person," said Reggie Minton, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
"Jeff is one of the best and smartest coaches I've had the privilege to know. He's won everywhere he's coached and he's done it the right way. I'm amazed by his knowledge of the game and he follows the rules.
"I wasn't rooting against the other team, but I'm very pleased Jeff won his 500th game."
Athletic director Wood Selig, who was in Boston for the game, called it "an amazing accomplishment."
"Five hundred wins is a testimony to Jeff's knowledge of and dedication to the sport of basketball," Selig said.
"ODU is fortunate to have such a classy leader who has passionately dedicated his entire life's pursuit to the game of basketball."
That passion for basketball seems to be genetic. Jeff's father, Bob Jones, was the basketball coach at Kentucky Wesleyan, where he won the 1973 Division II national championship.
Jones was impressed with his son's courage to ask for the chalk as a freshman, but not surprised that he sketched the play in a way that everyone could understand.
"I'm amazed at the knowledge he has," Bob Jones said. "I don't know of any coach who can see and be able to analyze what's happening in a game than Jeff. I could see that in him when he was in high school."
Apollo didn't have a gym of its own, but played in a 4,000-seat arena that was often packed. Basketball at the time was almost a religion in parts of Kentucky and Jeff was a convert before he entered grade school.
Both Jeff and brother Doug became daily fixtures at Kentucky Wesleyan practices. Dad set the rules: be absolutely quiet until practice is over.
"Then they would go out and start shooting," Bob Jones said. "They would go through shooting drills. They would stay late after practice."
"I'd watch practice and then often go talk to my dad," Jeff Jones said.
Jeff had nothing but basketball on his mind and his Dad knew it.
Bob Jones had an open gym during the summer for his players who lived nearby, but at times players from Kentucky, Western Kentucky and other schools would drop in to play, along with tons of high school players.
"I threw Jeff into the middle of that," Bob Jones said. "He learned how to get banged up and to bang others around. He was 14 or 15 and was playing against good high school and college players who knew how to play and were so much bigger physically."
Jones became a star at Apollo (named for the space program), where he was recruited by most SEC and ACC schools. He signed with the University of Virginia, where he was a four-year starter and the acknowledged team leader.
Jones dished out a school-record 598 assists and made more than 50 percent of his shots. His assists record would later be broken by John Crotty, whom Jones helped recruit to U.Va.
UVa. won the National Invitation Tournament and advanced to the NCAA Final Four in his last two seasons and was 102-28 in Jones' four years as a player.
When his college career ended, he turned down lucrative offers from U.Va. alumni to enter the business world in order to give pro basketball a shot. A badly sprained ankle in training camp ended his professional hopes.
U.Va. coach Terry Holland then offered him a part-time coaching gig. He was paid just $15,000 and could not recruit, but it was during his first year on the U.Va. bench that he realized what others around him already knew – he loved coaching.
Jones worked his way up to become Holland's top assistant. When Holland resigned in 1990 to become the athletic director at Davidson, Jones applied for the job.
Jones was not the preferred candidate of athletic director Jim Copeland, and you couldn't blame Copeland. Jones had no head coaching experience.
However, when several other candidates withdrew their names, Copeland named Jones the head coach. At age 29, he was the youngest coach in ACC history.
U.Va. averaged 21 victories in his five seasons, in which the Cavs won the 1992 NIT and went to four NCAA tournaments, including the Elite Eight in 1995.
But U.Va. slumped the final three years, with the Cavs going 11-19 in his final season. He was fired in 1998.
That's when Jones faced his first major bout with adversity.
The media was hard on Jones his last couple of years at U.Va., but Jones hardly ever reads newspapers, so that never bothered him.
"Let's be honest, being fired from any job sucks," Jones said. "I don't wish that on anyone, although it was a great growing experience for me.
"But having grown up a coaches' son, I also knew it was a business."
The players, coaches and administrators are U.Va. were all supportive, Jones said, including Holland, who had become the athletic director at U.Va. and made the decision to fire Jones.
But not so for some U.Va. alumni and donors, with whom he thought he had a close relationship.
He was deeply hurt by "the animus, the vitriol, the harsh comments from people that I thought were my friends," he said.
"I get it why I was let go. If you don't produce, that's what happens. But in all my years at Virginia, I gave everything I had to the University. I hope people know now that I gave everything I had to that program."
But he added: "There are still scars that haven't healed from that time."
Since he came to ODU, he's been trying to schedule a series with U.Va., which has played home-and-home against George Mason, James Madison and VCU in recent years. For whatever reason, U.Va. has rebuffed Jones, whose staff includes former U.Va. star Bryant Stith and former assistant coach Dennis Wolff.
When I asked Jones if would he enjoy playing at U.Va., he said he wouldn't.
"But it would be good for our program," he said. "That's why we want to play them."
Jones served as an associate head coach at Rhode Island for the first year after U.Va. fired him, but had his mind set on becoming a head coach again.
American then hired him in 2000 and he led the school to two NCAA tournament bids and the CIT. He was 211-183 at American, which by every measure was successful.
American upset Maryland, beating the Terps for the first time in 80 years, and also won at Florida State.
Selig hired him in 2013 at ODU, where Jones has experienced great success.
He won 18 games his first season at ODU and the Monarchs won just five games the year before. ODU has been to postseason play in four of his six seasons and Jones is 143-68 with the Monarchs.
It was at ODU where he would face his greatest bout of adversity – with cancer.
Jones asked me to accompany Selig into a meeting with him last August. Jones had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years earlier and had been treated and apparently cured.
But the cancer came back, and his treatment options were limited. He'd already tried surgery and radiation and so drugs, some very hard on your system, were his only option.
He kept the recurrence secret for a year. But at the meeting, he told me about the recurrence asked me to write a column to break the news to ODU Nation. A link to that column is below.
https://odusports.com/news/2018/9/5/211770710.aspx
It was clear during interviews with he and wife Danielle Jones that they were extraordinarily close. Danee, as Danielle is called by friends, was absolutely possessed to find him the best treatment available. Jeff has since said, "I just did what she said."
When he sat down with his mother, Carol, to tell her the cancer was back, she told him that she had cancer as well. They both cried.
He grew emotional, with tears glistening in his eyes, as he told that story to me. Carol, by the way, is doing well. She's still taking medication and was at ODU for the Monarchs' first two homes games.
Opposing coaches used his cancer diagnosis against him on the recruiting trail, and Jones knew that ODU fans, and the players, would be watching for signs that the cancer was wearing him down.
Players last season said they saw no difference. Ahmad Caver, the senior point guard, said the only difference was "he doesn't yell at us quite as much as he used to."
"To his credit, if you didn't know any of this was going on, you wouldn't know that he had any problem," said former ODU All-American Dave Twardzik, color commentator on the ODU Radio Network.
"It didn't change his approach nor did it affect his passion for basketball. He just loves the game."
Last season turned out to be one of the most fulfilling is his career. The Monarchs finished 26-9 and won the Conference USA regular-season and tournament titles. They defeated Western Kentucky, the league's most talented team, three times, including a home contest in which the Monarchs trailed, 21-0, and in the C-USA championship game in Frisco, Texas.
Jones briefly lost his composure, as buried his face into a towel, and cried as he watched his team celebrate on the court. The scene was captured by CBS Sports Network cameras and broadcast around the country. His struggle with prostate cancer then became a national story.
Bob Jones says, "there wasn't one thing that led to that. There were so many things that happened to him, that he had to endure, that led to that."
Jones saw his son cry, and said: "I cried more than he did. I was so happy he'd won the championship.
"People don't realize how difficult it is to go to the NCAA tournament when you're in Conference USA. There are 14 schools and only one is going to make it."
Jones added that "the league is too big. It should separate into two different leagues."
Sounds like good advice.
The Monarchs played Purdue in the NCAA tournament in Hartford, Conn., and even though they held their own physically with the more muscular Boilermakers, they lost because they couldn't make shots they usually made.
Jones announced in Hartford that his cancer was in remission and that he planned to coach many more years at ODU (his cancer is still in remission and he is off his cancer meds). Asked when he might retire, he answer was retire to do what?
"Coaching basketball is what I do," he said.
Selig rewarded Jones with a contract extension shortly after the season ended and said he'd like Jones to coach long enough to claim his 600th victory.
"Jeff has always recruited students with outstanding academic acumen, high integrity and an absolute appetite for winning," he said. "That's very much in the mold of Jeff Jones, both as a player and a coach.
"We want Jeff to remain at ODU for a long time."
When I texted Jones to ask him to talk about winning his 500th game, he called back and said "I thought it was 400."
I thought he was joking, but it became obvious he was telling the truth. If I was about to win my 500th game, I would be shouting it from the roof tops. Clearly, milestones don't matter much to Jones.
"Jeff just doesn't care about that stuff," Twardzik said. "He approached this game the same way he's approached every other game in his career."
Jones does much behind the scenes to help people, but eschews publicity about that as well. When I asked him if he would go see a friend of mine who was dying from cancer, he said yes, on one condition: "You don't write a story about it."
He's tender hearted with those he's been close with at ODU and buys birthday and Christmas presents.
Minton said he went to the Middle East with Jones "five or six times" to meet and mingle with the troops. Most of the visits were for a week. Bob Jones says he recalls Jeff telling him that he and other visiting coaches had to wear flack jackets.
"Jeff never hesitated when we asked him to do this," Minton said. "I'm sure he wouldn't hesitate if we asked him to do this again."
Last season he and Danielle began raising funds to help children with cancer, and Jeff wrote the first check. He's also walked in cancer races and has held several events on campus to try to educate people on being tested for prostate cancer. He has been honored by national associations for his willingness to discuss what is a very private and sensitive disease to men.
Jones, who is 59, is an advocate for any males younger than 50 to get tested. He didn't get tested until a few years ago, when a routine exam he took for a life insurance policy turned up the cancer diagnosis.
"If he had been tested earlier," Danielle said, "the cancer might have been more treatable."
Jones wasn't overly impressed with his 500th win.
"The biggest number for this game was three," he said, referring to ODU's number of victories this season.
"When I'm done coaching, those numbers will be nice and hopefully I'll have a chance to talk to my grandkids about it," he said.
"Really, this is a credit to all of the players, former coaches and assistant coaches I worked with. They've not just been instrumental in my career, they've been a huge factor in my life."
That's why Jones holds a dinner at the Final Four every season, to thank those who helped him. Every Thursday night before play begins they drink a toast to Rob Ades, who was Jones' first attorney who helped negotiate contracts.
"I try to make sure they know how much they mean to me."
Bob Jones was impressed with his 500th win, which he witnessed on a TV in his living room.
So were Jones' three children – Meg Phillips, Madison Abbott and Jeff Jones – who also watched on TV. Madison has given Jeff two grandchildren and Meg one.
Meg says he was a good Dad in spite of being on the road.
"He called us every day," she said. "I think that's more contact than most people" have with their father. He still calls every day.
"Obviously, we are so proud of him and we love ODU."
Bob Jones is also proud, but not just because of Jeff's basketball accomplishments.
"I know this sounds like a father, but I truly believe if anyone deserves that kind of recognition, it's Jeff.
"This hasn't been easy for him. Nothing has been given to him. He had to work for everything.
"I'm proud of his 500th win. It's a tremendous accomplishment.
"But his humbleness, how he treats people, how he tries to help others he doesn't even know, all of that makes me the proudest as a father."
As it should.
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu
Minium: Jeff Jones Won His 500th game, but it’s Humbleness, and Not That Marvelous Milestone, That Makes His Parents the Proudest
