Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 24, 1993 TAG: 9303240084
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
JONES STAYS QUIET AS UVA MAKES NOISE
Jeff Jones talked Tuesday about retiring from coaching.There's no reason for Virginia athletic director Jim Copeland to drop his Dunkin' Donuts this morning and call Pete Gillen and Rick Barnes, however. Jones isn't going anywhere - just yet - except to the Meadowlands Arena for the NCAA East Regional this weekend.
Over lunch, Jones was asked where he saw himself coaching in 20 years. Between bites of his barbecue sandwich, the Cavaliers' basketball coach answered, "I won't be coaching 20 years from now. There's just too much excess baggage to go with the job."
This came on a day when Jones' name was tossed into speculation as Pat Foster's successor at Houston. Jones seemed confused and bemused by the report, but still appreciative. "That's the first time this has happened," he said.
It won't be the last. Houston isn't as good a job as the one Jones has now, the only job he really has wanted since he finished his UVa point-guard days and didn't make the NBA. When Copeland was interviewing outside University Hall to fill the vacancy left by Jones' boss three years ago, Jones portrayed himself as nothing more than the coach-in-waiting.
"It's not just that I wanted to be a head coach," said Jones, who gladly walks in the footsteps of Terry Holland on the UVa sideline. "I'm not so in love with the coaching profession that I could just coach anywhere. I wanted to be the leader of this program."
He is that, although it isn't as obvious as on many other sidelines. Jones perhaps is sometimes too quiet for his own team's good when coaching foes are screaming "Yipes! Stripes!" However, when it comes to coaching, the only game he's interested in playing is the one on the floor.
When TV talk turns to "bright young coaches," rarely is Jones, 32, mentioned in the same sentence. Although his undersized team that lacks straight shooters has overachieved this season, Jones received no votes for ACC coach of the year.
Coming off an NIT championship last March, Jones said this year that he liked the NCAA bracket in which the Cavaliers were seeded, but "quite honestly, after being left out last year, they could have sent us to Timbuktu and I'd have felt good about it."
In three seasons, Jones has guided his alma mater to 62 victories, mostly of the blue-collar variety. How easy has it been? In many games, the Cavaliers' attack has felt like it did in Tuesday's practice, when the offense went against a six-man defense that was supposed to help simulate Cincinnati's pressure. UVa borrowed that from Alabama-Birmingham, which made Cincinnati struggle for a split this season.
"That's what this is about," Jones said. "The idea is our team working together toward a common goal, being successful, not me getting a headline in the paper. If that's what I wanted, I'd have [UVa's publicists] put out all kind of stuff on it. I'm not in this to be called the greatest. If you're in it for that, you're in it for the wrong reasons."
That's not to say the Virginia coach isn't interested is keeping up with all of the Joneses of college basketball.
"Look at Dean Smith," Jones said. "You hear people knock him, but why? You can't argue the success he's had on the floor, with the kind of people and the kind of players he's turned out. And you don't see Dean out begging for interviews. He's not out there throwing himself in front of a TV truck.
"He has the right idea. He's consistently done it the right way over the long haul."
The son of a coach, Jones watched his father, Bob, win the college division national championship in his first year as a college head coach, at Kentucky Wesleyan, in 1973. Then, he spent his high school years listening to the whines because his dad didn't win it again.
"More than anything, being a coach's son opened my eyes," Jones said. "I saw there could be great highs, but there could also be some lows. I saw how some things could be very unfair and some things that just mystified me. I learned then it was the nature of the beast."
Bob Jones, now a high school athletic director in Northern Kentucky, said he knew his son could be a good coach because when Jeff and his younger brother, Doug, went to their dad's practices, they sat quietly and watched the workouts instead of running through the bleachers like most kids would.
"The thing that surprises me now," Jones' father said, "is that Jeff never gets mad. I don't see how in the world sometimes he doesn't lose it."
Jones said the thing that surprises him about his third UVa team, built on packed-in, half-court defense, "is maybe the ability to hang in there. This team is not the most experienced, and going in we really didn't have one marquee name, one guy to go to."
Jones would argue, but he's that guy.