Men’s basketball: Jonesing for a championship

As the players jumped raucously in jubilation, as the fans rushed the court in utter bliss and as the confetti streamed down from the rafters to the Agganis Arena floor, the Boston University men’s basketball program was experiencing a dream fully realized.

After clawing back to take down Stony Brook University in the America East Tournament championship game, the Terriers were headed to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in almost a decade and were part of a March Madness montage usually reserved for other, more successful schools.

Amid the celebration and chaos, however, stood a man who had watched the game from behind the bench, a man who, unbeknownst to BU players, coaches and fans, would be the person who with the responsibility of harnessing this success as the program’s next head coach – Joe Jones.

Having just completed his first season as the Boston College associate head coach, Jones made the trip east down Commonwealth Avenue to watch his good friend Patrick Chambers coach the Terriers and at the time, never could have imagined he would soon be in Chambers’ position.

But now that he is, he couldn’t be happier.

“I wanted the job really badly,” Jones said. “When the job opened, I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. It’s the best job in the league and that’s the kind of job that you want as a head coach, so when that job opened up it was an absolute no-brainer.”

For Jones, the BU job represents the latest stop in a career that has taken him to several programs in a developmental arc that doesn’t quite follow convention in college basketball.

The coaching bug initially bit Jones the summer before his freshman year at State University of New York at Oswego. While working at an overnight sports camp in 1983, a 17-year-old Jones coached his first basketball team, a group of 11-year-olds that he also educated on the fundamentals of the game during the daytime.

“I remember the first time we had practice with the team, you just got this unbelievable feeling of organizing drills and working the kids out,” Jones said. “I just loved it. Right there, I knew that I liked it but I didn’t really understand to the depth of how much I did like it. That’s when I was first hit by it.”

From that moment onward, coaching always remained in the back of Jones’ mind. Yet, he was too concerned with his college studies and having a productive basketball career as the Oswego Lakers’ 6-foot-2 starting point guard that he didn’t have time to dwell on a possible future in coaching.

His junior year at Oswego, Jones started thinking more about his post-college life and met with his basketball coach, Paul Callahan, who advised him to consider becoming a guidance counselor.

Heeding Callahan’s words, Jones went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1987. He stayed at his alma mater and received his master’s degree in counseling, serving as the hall director of Hart Hall during those two graduate school years.

Straight out of grad school, Jones immediately found a job as a middle school guidance counselor in the Comsewogue School District in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y., and coached a team of seventh and eighth graders afterschool. He worked there for three years and then was promoted to the high school level, replacing the now-retired Frank Romeo as the Warriors’ bench boss.

His passion for basketball slowly grew and his popularity around the college basketball landscape spread, culminating in a phone call from Hofstra University’s newly appointed head coach Jay Wright in 1994, where Jones’ story took a major twist.

At first, he was hesitant about the assistant coaching gig at Hofstra, but Wright finally convinced him to give it a shot. Jones took a two-year absence from being Comsewogue High School’s counselor and head coach and became Wright’s assistant at Hofstra.

His journey from a middle and high school coach to an NCAA assistant coach had come full swing.

“I fell in love with it,” Jones said of his new occupation. “I couldn’t get enough of. I loved every part of the job. I didn’t mind the hours. It was just awesome.

“I loved meeting the new people and working with the players on and off the court. I was in charge of helping with recruiting and academics, and it was right up my alley with the guidance counselor background, so it was great.”

Three years as an assistant coach at Hofstra, six years as an assistant coach at Villanova University under Steve Lappas and then Wright, seven years as the head coach of Columbia University, and a year as an associate coach at BC later, and Jones, now 46 years young, finds himself in command of the best job in the America East.

When it was announced in late June that Lynch had settled on Jones to take over the program, the Terriers’ new coach was charged with a task – not to construct and rebuild as he had at Columbia, but to take a polished product and work against stagnation and regression.

Several mid or low-major programs in Division I basketball over the years have made the NCAA Tournament and experienced brief periods of success only to fade over time. It’s a trap that a smaller program like BU could easily fall into, but if it hopes to achieve what Chambers prescribed for it as the “Gonzaga or Xavier of the East,” it has to overcome coaching changes just as those two programs did and maintain a consistent level of success.

Thus far, according to several players, the transition from Chambers to his good friend Jones has been a smooth one, with players and coaches working toward the same goals and principles.

“We talk about it all the time that there’s not much of a difference between those two guys,” said senior forward Patrick Hazel, who will be playing for the fourth coach in his college career. “We’ve been learning a new offense, but I think our staple and what we lay our foundation on will be defense and rebounding. We’re those kinds of guys.”

Implementing an offensive system that sophomore point guard D.J. Irving described as even “more up-tempo” than Chambers’ frantic attack, Jones will now look to take what proved to be a winning product last year and mold it based on his plans for the program going forward.

And though Jones’ mission at BU is one that will require diligence and patience over time, for now, he is focused on continuing to build relationships with his players and strengthen a team that he and many others feel can make it back to the promised land of the NCAA Tournament.

“To be honest, I’m someone that cares about people, that loves his players and I know over time, they’ll see that love and see that respect I have for them, and over time, they will become even more comfortable with me as the leader of the program,” Jones said. “This isn’t something that happens overnight – you can’t force it, you can’t rush it, it has to be something that happens naturally.”