Article on JJ and the team

[mgsteve]

Life is good for ex-Tiger

Jones has North Texas program on right track

By Don Wade

Contact

January 24, 2004

Even now, four years after he filled in for deposed University of Memphis basketball coach Tic Price, Johnny Jones uses the same phrasing as he did after being replaced by John Calipari.

"I was thrown into the fire," Jones says of that difficult time, albeit with that reflexive laugh of his, the laugh that says no hard feelings, it’s all good.

"But it helped me and propelled me," Jones adds, "and I can deal with adversity."

It helped prepare him for the job he holds now: head basketball coach at North Texas, a place rife with its own challenges when Jones accepted the job before the 2001-2002 season.

"They had won a combined 20 games in a four-year period," says Jones, who this year has North Texas off to a 3-1 start in the Sun Belt Conference (8-8 overall) and in a three-way tie for first place going into today’s 4:05 p.m. game at Arkansas State.

"The year I came in they’d won four games, but only two against Division 1 teams."

Which means that Johnny Jones was going from the Memphis fire into the Texas frying pan.

But Jones’s having been through a basketball baptism of fire was what appealed to North Texas athletic director Rick Villarreal. Sure, Villarreal and Jones had their LSU connection. When Johnny was an assistant basketball coach under Dale Brown, Villarreal was an assistant football coach.

"I’d go and watch them play," Villarreal recalls, "and Johnny would come over and cheer on football."

Villarreal immediately liked Jones. But it was during |Jones’s season as interim coach of the Tigers, when Villarreal was an associate athletic director at Southern Miss, that the future North Texas AD really took notice.

"That (Memphis) team started kind of slow," says Villarreal. "But down the stretch that team went on a streak (six straight wins, including a first-round Conference USA Tournament win) when it really could have just gone into a cave.

"It was impressive that he took that situation and made it a positive."

The Tigers finished 15-16 that season, but remember they were once 9-15. And Jones and his team were making this run amid an increasingly public search for a big-name coach.

At North Texas, wins were even more precious and few, and so were quality, dependable players. Some guys didn’t want to go to class. Other guys were thinking of transferring.

"We needed a stabilizing force," says Villarreal.

And Jones, 42, has been just that. That first season, North Texas went 16-15. Last season, the team won just seven games, but injuries were many and Villarreal not only was able to look past the usual bottom line, he felt moved to give Jones a contract extension that runs through 2008.

This season, the 3-1 start is the Mean Green’s best start in any conference since a 3-1 beginning in 1994-95.

"We’ve still got a tough road ahead of us," Jones says. "I didn’t come in here just to get the team better.

"I want to get guys to a championship level."

Mr. Nice Guy

In the end, every coach’s identity comes down to his primary strength and his main weakness.

With Johnny Jones, people sometimes wonder if they are one in the same.

"The one thing people will mention more than anything," says Villarreal, "is ‘he’s a great guy.’

"He’s never met a stranger. And he doesn’t have an arrogant bone in his body. In the interview process, some people were actually taken aback by his affection for people, the way he’d put his arm around people.

"They wondered if he shouldn’t be more distant. But the reality is, that’s Johnny Jones. What you see is what you get."

Which is why Memphis assistants Charlie Leonard and Fred Rike were only too happy to accept Jones’s invitation to join him in Denton, Texas, north of Dallas-Fort Worth.

"He’s the easiest guy in America to work for," says Leonard, 50, who from 1990-97 was head basketball coach at Christian Brothers University.

Jones is also what’s commonly known as a "player’s coach." And it’s a term some coaches take as the ultimate compliment and others take as a supreme insult.

To Jones, the term simply fits into his philosophy, what he believes is the best way to coach, a method that he says worked for his old mentor, Dale Brown, and today works well for hotshot Florida coach Billy Donovan, from whom Jones sought advice during his year after Memphis when he was an assistant with Alabama.

"The closer you are to your players the more they tend to give you everything they’ve got," Jones says. "Billy Dono|van told me he gets his arms around his players, embraces his players, and they’ve always played hard for him. And I think it’s worked for us."

How well it works in terms of wins and losses the rest of this season is difficult to predict. All of Jones’s scholarship players are from Texas or his old Loui|si|ana stomping grounds.

His best player is 6-9, 250-pound senior forward Shawnson Johnson, who transferred from LSU and is averaging about 15 points and 9 rebounds a game.

"Shawnson Johnson," Jones says with his easy laugh. "You ought to hear the announcer. He has a lot of fun with that deal."

As Jones seems to be with this coaching deal. His wife Kelli, 5-year-old son, John Vincent, and 4-year-old daughter, Jillian, are doing fine and life is good.

"We’ve developed some relationships, some friends," Jones says. "My wife, it’s kind of grown on her. Just like Memphis, they’ve got some nice malls here."

Meantime, the basketball program dribbles forward.

"We had 6,000 here against Indiana during Christmas break," Leonard says. "It’s headed in the right direction.

"It’s about getting the job done, take caring of the kids, taking time to get into the Dallas market. It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun one."

Says Villarreal: "Johnny’s got this team believing in itself. We may not be the best team out there, but we’ll play as hard as anybody."

And then win or lose, Johnny Jones will put his arm around the player who needs it the most.

What you see is what you get - not an arrogant bone in this coach’s body.

[Gakusei]

Coach Jones is a class act. I'm glad he's decided to be here at North Texas.

[UNTLifer]

Great article and insight in to our coach. Too bad this comes from a Memphis webpage article and not one of the local papers. This would be an immediate marketing and recruiting tool for UNT. I can't believe Vito hasn't done a story of this type on both DD and JJ.