With Fast-Paced Offense, Jones Sees Bright Future

With Joe Jones joining his brother James as an Ivy League head basketball coach, the Ancient Eight has become a family affair. For Jones, who says that everybody he meets asks about how he will deal with the sibling rivalry when his team faces his brother's Yale squad, the meaning of family goes beyond genetics.

To Jones, a basketball team is a family, and he hopes to earn his players' trust in the coming months.

"I'm not into what has happened in the past," Jones said in an interview Tuesday. "My expectations are that we will be a committed family, that when players have concerns they're gonna be able to come in and talk to me about them, and in return I am going to give them the same type of loyalty."

Regularly in the office until 11 p.m. since being hired last Friday, Jones is settling into his first college head coaching job after six seasons as an assistant at Villanova, under both current head coach Steve Lappas and former head coach Jay Wright.

The Villanova teams that Jones coached were known for pushing the ball up-court and demanding a fast tempo--quite a departure from the slow Princeton Offense employed at Columbia under Armond Hill.

Though Jones has yet to see his players on the court, he ensured that next year's team will not run the Princeton Offense.

"Although I've scouted the Princeton Offense," Jones said, "I've never coached the Princeton Offense, so that's not something that we're going to run."

Jones also spent four years at Hofstra as an assistant under Wright, who convinced him to leave the high school coaching ranks for the Hofstra campus.

It was from Wright that Jones learned to instill the trust and continuity of a family in a basketball program.

"I think the greatest compliment that you can give him is that his guys always keep in touch with him," Jones said, "and he's brought a lot of the guys that have played in the past back to Villanova, and they've spent time with our guys.

"We're gonna try to do the same things here."

Jones and Wright met in 1989 at a Villanova basketball camp where Jones was a middle school counselor at age 23, and Wright was the team's volunteer assistant. When Wright got the job at Hofstra in 1994, Jones was coaching at Long Island's Comsewogue High School and serving as a guidance counselor. His old friend called offering a job, but Jones was convinced that his situation at Comsewogue was too good to give up. Wright convinced Jones to meet with him, however, and the conversation changed Jones' career.

"After 10 minutes of talking to him, he changed my life and convinced me that I wanted to be a college coach," Jones said. "I took a leave of absence for a few years and gave it a shot and loved every minute of it. It was hard, it was challenging, and it was tough, and that made it all the better. That's what I'm so excited about with being here; I see some similarities that we had in our first job."

Jones still speaks very highly of his two mentors.

"Coach Lappas was someone who gave me the opportunity to coach at the highest level in Division I basketball," Jones said. "He was a great teacher in that he gave the guys confidence to go out there and play free. Our guys went out there, and they weren't scared to play. That's something that I wanted to put in my repertoire as a coach.

"Jay is someone that has been my mentor," Jones said. "He is someone that I am very close to, who I talk to every day."

When asked what attributes attracted the search committee to Jones, Athletics Director John Reeves cited his ability to recruit, especially in New York City.

"Joseph's skill as a recruiter is his biggest asset," Reeves said. "He has demonstrated ability to recruit and knows the New York area."

Coming from Villanova, Jones will have to look at student athletes with different attributes in trying to find good fits for his program in Morningside Heights, but he still places a large emphasis on New York City.

"When you go talk to a kid and talk to their parents about the importance of education, you know they're understanding that [if they are considering Columbia], and that is what I wanted. To have a chance to work at a school that preaches education and has different standards than other Division I schools, I think that's terrific," Jones said.

"The Ivy League is very unique, and it's a little easier to get New York City kids to Hofstra just because of the level of education that Hofstra is and where Columbia is," he said, "so there aren't going to be as many kids that we are going to be able to tap into, but it is the hotbed of high school basketball."

"The Catholic league is tremendous, the public league is great. When those kids are there, we have to do our job and sell Columbia. ... It's a tremendous opportunity for those kids from New York to stay home and play here because of the benefit they are going to see four years from now."

While now focused on learning as much about Columbia as he can and putting in place his coaching staff, Jones plans to hit the road to recruit next week, tapping both talent recruited by the departed coaching staff and other interested players that he is aware of.

Jones also said that he would not hesitate to pitch Columbia to high school players that conventional wisdom says would be more likely to attend a basketball powerhouse from the Big East or Atlantic Coast Conference.

"You have to be smart with the way you recruit," Jones said. "Recruiting is battling, you have to be prepared, you have to be armed with your resources and be able to communicate to the family about the benefits of a degree from Columbia."

Jones shied away from setting a timetable for bringing an Ivy League title to Columbia, but did recognize that his brother has set the bar high by winning a share of the Ancient Eight title in his third year in New Haven.

"At some point this program will be a championship-caliber program," Jones said. "There's just New York City, the resources here, the type of school that this is, the vision that the administration has now, and the excitement that's going on with different sports. I think it's going to happen, and it's just a matter of time."

He described the style of basketball that he teaches as defined by four principles: defending, rebounding, attacking, and executing.
"These are going to be the staples of the Columbia program: We're gonna defend. That means we're going to make teams take contested shots and not allow them to dribble-penetrate," Jones said. "The next thing we're going to do is rebound the ball, and the reason that we'll be in such a great rebounding position is that we're not going to get beat off the dribble, so we're not going to have to help.

"The next thing we're going to do is that we're going to attack, and that means that once we get the rebound we're going to try to advance the ball as quickly as possible to try to get conventional breaks, and we're gonna try to get our best shooters' jump shots in transition.

"The next thing we're going to do is execute. If we can't get a good shot in transition, then we're going to execute our offense; whether it's the secondary break or whether it's motion or a set--we're gonna run. That's really the theory behind my philosophy."

At 37 years old, Jones is regarded by many as a rising star of the profession, and Reeves said that he would not hold it against the new coach if, after turning Columbia into an Ivy League powerhouse, he moved on to a higher-profile job.

Jones, however, said that currently his plan is to spend a significant amount of time in New York, where he and his wife both have family. He is also excited about raising his one-year old daughter in the Columbia environment.

"When we get this thing going in the right direction, I think it's a place where I can stay an awfully long time," Jones said. "My feelings may change after five years, but right now that's the plan, to stay in this area and build this program into a program that everyone can be excited about and proud of."

The men's basketball team is still in the Ivy League-imposed rest period, meaning that Jones cannot work out players. He has, however, met with the team and with individual players, and believes that the team's 2-25 record from last year does not represent their potential for next season.

"I'm very pleased with the way that the guys have carried themselves. They're working out and they're playing. They lost their coach and they're still doing all the right things," Jones said.

"Right now, I think they're as excited about the future as I am. They understand what we have to do. There are definitely going to be some tough days ahead but we'll work them out. I'm really happy with they way that they've handled themselves, and I'm proud of them and looking forward to working with them."

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