Harris, Cavs having their ups and downs
By Whitelaw Reid / wreid@dailyprogress.com | 978-7247
December 28, 2006

It’s pretty easy to see why Will Harris was voted Most Likable by his high school peers.

Harris is always smiling. Always laughing. Always talking with anybody he can find.

Whether it’s chatting with a young fan or playfully blowing a kiss to a teammate, the Virginia freshman always seems to be in the middle of everything.

Harris also happens to be the team’s best quote - a sports writer’s dream.

“That’s all in his personality,” said Virginia co-captain J.R. Reynolds. “He’s a clown. He keeps the team loose.”

But last week in Puerto Rico, Harris’ enthusiasm appeared tempered.

The New York City native only had a combined three points and two rebounds in losses to Appalachian State and Utah, then had a nine-point, eight-rebound effort against the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez.

“He’s a freshman and is going to go through his ups and downs,” Reynolds said. “It’s just a matter of him staying positive and focused. He’s got to know that he’s going to have rough times. It’s how you respond to it. You just have to stay with it.”

At this point, the same thing could be said for the entire Virginia team. UVa is coming off a 1-2 showing in the San Juan Shootout - arguably the three most disappointing performances of the Dave Leitao era.

Tonight, the Cavaliers try and get back on track when they play host to American, which is coached by former Virginia coach Jeff Jones.

“Everybody’s anxious to see our response to what happened, and see if it was a little blip on the radar screen - an aberration - or is that who we’re going to be,” said Virginia coach Dave Leitao. “I think there’s an anxiousness on all of our parts to see that.”

Harris, who is averaging 6.0 points and 4.5 rebounds in 17.4 minutes per game, says playing at the college level has been an ongoing adjustment.

“I’m coming from a place where I was always the leader,” Harris said, “and I come here and I have to learn to fit my game into a bunch of other great players’ games.”

Harris’ biggest challenge has come on the defensive end.

In San Juan, the Cavaliers allowed Appalachian State and Utah to shoot a combined 58 percent from the field, including a gaudy 51 percent (24 of 47) from 3-point range.

Harris, who battled a foot injury during the first few weeks of the season, has sometimes had trouble guarding quicker players on the perimeter.

“Coach is real big on defense, and I’m not the greatest defensive player in the world - I’m not Bruce Bowen or nothing like that,” said Harris, smiling, “so I’ve got to pick it up on defense. I’m working hard on it in practice, so I’m sure it will get better sooner than later.”

Harris, 20, is more seasoned than typical college freshmen. The 6-foot-6, 230-pounder originally signed with Nebraska, but then elected to take a postgraduate year at Brewster Academy. Harris verbally committed to Connecticut before deciding that Virginia was the best place for him.

“I feel like if I had come straight from high school, I’d probably be sitting at the end of the bench somewhere because I wouldn’t know how to handle myself,” said Harris, who played against some of the top competition in the country in the New England Prep League last season.

“My postgrad year showed me the level that I have to play at and that I was going to be tested every single day. That helped me out a lot.”

In the win over UPR-Mayaguez, Harris, who usually plays the “3” position, logged most of his minutes at the “4.” At times, he was ferocious on the offensive glass.

However, since the Tarzans’ tallest player was only 6-foot-6 - and the team had six players shorter than 5-foot-10 - Leitao wasn’t celebrating.

“I’ll be encouraged if I get all those things consistently, and that goes for everybody,” Leitao said. “You can’t be a flicker of hope and then not do it. That’s what repetition is all about.”

What Harris does seem to be consistent with is his chatter. Against UPR-Mayaguez, he didn’t seem afraid to get in the face of several teammates.

“That’s good,” Reynolds said. “We need everyone to be vocal. That’s better for our team. Five guys talking on the court is good. Then you know you have a team that’s out there and alert, and ready for things.”

Believe it or not, Harris said what happened in San Juan may turn out to be a good thing in the long run.

“We learned as a team that you have to be able to pull together and stick together as a unit, and we can’t be disconnected like we were,” he said.

“We have to stick together all the time and can’t ever take a break.”

And try to keep smiling.

Dunks

Ryan Pettinella, who injured his left knee in the San Juan Shootout, will not play tonight, according to Leitao. Pettinella’s status for the foreseeable future sounds iffy. “Essentially what happened is his knee cap got popped out, then got popped right back in,” Leitao said. “We’ve got a number of different evaluations on it, but probably have to wait until the swelling goes down. Over the next 24 to 48 hours we’ll decide what is the best course of action.” … Solomon Tat (groin injury) is doing better but is doubtful for tonight. “He’s getting a feel for things again, but we’re taking it really slow because we don’t want a reoccurrence,” Leitao said. … American (7-4) is coming off a closer-than-expected 66-54 loss to Maryland on Saturday. All of the Eagles’ losses this season have come on the road (Maryland, Yale, Xavier and Richmond). … Jeff Jones won’t be the only former Virginia player in the house tonight. Jason Williford, who played at UVa under Jones from 1991-95, is one of Jones’ assistant coaches. During the summer, Williford was a finalist for the assistant’s job on Leitao’s staff that eventually went to Bill Courtney. Kieran Donohue, another of Jones’ assistants, was at Virginia from 1993-98. Greg Lyons, another assistant, earned three letters at UVa before graduating in 2001.

 

Jones' mind flooded with memories
Jerry Ratcliffe / jratcliffe@dailyprogress.com | 978-7251
December 28, 2006

Who knows what kind of memories will be summoned tonight when Jeff Jones returns to coach against his alma mater?

One of the top guards in Virginia history, Jones went on to replace Terry Holland as the Cavaliers’ head coach until he ran into some bad luck in two of his final eight seasons. But that was in 1998 when things came apart at the seams, and now Jones is in his seventh season in building a solid basketball program at American University.

Tonight, his 7-4 Eagles will take on 7-3 Virginia in John Paul Jones Arena, a place that Jones had only seen while driving by until Wednesday afternoon’s shootaround.

No stranger to the city

While Charlottesville has grown since his departure, he frequently visits his three children who reside here: Jeff (age 13 and an up-and-coming baseball and basketball player at St. Anne’s-Belfield); Madison (age 16, a junior at St. Anne’s, where she plays field hockey, lacrosse and is class president); and Meghann (18, a freshman at Wake Forest).

Jones hasn’t forgotten his way to the Aberdeen Barn, where he made sure he took his team for dinner Wednesday night in order to soak up Charlottesville’s true sports and dining culture, as was a custom when he played and coached for the Cavaliers.

He’s hoping his Eagles can pull off an upset tonight, although after Virginia’s three shoddy performances in Puerto Rico last week, upset might not be the correct word. His team’s 7-2 boltaway was the best start by an AU team in 18 years, but it blew a winnable game at Yale, then lost a hard-fought 66-54 decision at Maryland a few days ago.

Not dwelling on the past

Like most teams at this time of year, American is searching for its identity and Jones is pushing for consistency.

Tonight is part of all that before Patriot League play begins. But tonight, not only will the AU players strive to block out playing in the surroundings of “The Jack,” so will its coach.

“[Tonight’s game] has some sort of special meaning,” Jones said Wednesday upon hitting town. “This is a place that was awfully good to me, and I spent a bunch of terrific years here and enjoyed most of ’em. There were a couple of them that weren’t so much fun.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of great memories. But at the same time, the focus is not about that. I certainly don’t want to get caught up too much in reminiscing and all that when we have a job to do.”

Back where it all started

Perhaps his greatest basketball moment, at least as a coach, came in the 1994-95 season when Jones led the Cavaliers to within a whisper of the Final Four, losing in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Arkansas.

Virginia has made it back to the NCAAs only twice since, once under Jones (1996-97), and once under Pete Gillen (1999-2000).

“When you’ve got time to look back, there’s so many great things and they all center around the people you’re working side-by-side with, the student-athletes, the coaches, the trainers,” Jones said. “Purely from a basketball standpoint, without a doubt, that ’95 season was rewarding. We got better each year. That senior class with Jason [Williford, now an assistant to Jones at AU], and Junior [Burrough] and Cory [Alexander], and those guys were my first recruiting class. You could make a point that we learned and grew up together.”

Jones will also never forget coaching Bryant Stith, UVa’s all-time leading scorer, and sending him out with an NIT title to cap a frustrating season.

Another highlight might surprise some.

“Even in that last year, ’98, while there were some struggles and we didn’t win a whole lot (11-19), that team probably came as close to its potential as any I had an opportunity to coach,” he said.

While he was one of the nation’s youngest head coaches when he took over UVa’s program and got off to an incredible start, he chooses not to play the “what if” game and rehash what went wrong.

“It’s not productive to dwell on those things,” he said.

Instead, he focuses on what is happening at American where the Eagles have played in the Patriot League championship game three times and came up just short in close contests on each occasion.

“I’m very appreciative that American gave me the chance to become a head coach again, and Washington, D.C., has been great,” said the former Wahoo. “The one thing that has been frustrating and disappointing is that we haven’t gotten over the hump in terms of winning the conference championship and getting into the NCAA Tournament.”

His Eagles aren’t favored to do that this season, but Jones believes he has a team that could be in the mix if it lives up to its potential. Winning the league would boost the pride of AU and the university community and pave the way for better things.

“When you’re in the ACC or other power conferences you take for granted the resources that you have,” Jones said. “I’m sure everybody here is excited about the new building. Everybody was complaining about University Hall. Well, heck, at our level, U-Hall would be a great place with a great locker room, weight room, training rooms.

When a program can cash in on any type of success in helping the university’s overall fundraising, that is a great tangible.”

His kids have told him how beautiful the arena is as well as former players John Crotty and Ted Jeffries. He was anxious to see the joint for himself. He said his reaction would probably be the same as other “old-timers.”

“It’s about time,” Jones said.



 

Jones back as foe
Former U.Va. player and coach will direct Eagles against Cavs
BY JOHN O'CONNOR
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Dec 28, 2006
AMERICAN AT U.VA.
TODAY: 7:30 p.m. RADIO: WRVA (1140), 7

The University of Virginia and American hooked up through "normal scheduling procedures," according to Cavaliers coach Dave Leitao. U.Va. and the Patriot League member agreed on a date. A five-figure guarantee will be deposited into American's account.

More goes with the Eagles' visit this evening to John Paul Jones Arena. In his seventh year as American's coach is Jeff Jones, who spent 20 years at Virginia as a player, assistant and head coach. Jones emphasized yesterday that in his mind, the event is the game, not his homecoming.

Jones came from Owensboro, Ky., led the Cavaliers in assists for four straight seasons (1979-82), became an assistant (1983-90), then head coach (1991-98) and resigned under pressure after team performance slipped and off-court deportment among program members became an issue.

"Number one, it's a great school. I absolutely love the school," said Jones, 46. "There were times, I guess, immediately after I [left] that emotions may have gotten the better of me, and I lost sight of all the great things that happened to me there, the relationships and all that.

"A lot of time has passed. It's beyond time to move forward."

With Jones as a coach, the Cavaliers went 146-104 (59-67 in the ACC). Jones' Virginia teams made five NCAA appearances (6-5) and won the 1992 National Invitation Tournament. Each member of Jones' three-man coaching staff also has U.Va. links. Richmond native Jason Williford was a Cavaliers standout 1991-95. Greg Lyons was a walk-on player at Virginia. Kieran Donohue was a Cavaliers manager and administrative assistant.

With about eight minutes remaining on the pregame clock tonight at JPJ, there will be a 60-second video shown that highlights Jones' U.Va. playing and coaching career. After the American starters are introduced, there will be a public-address introduction welcoming back the American coaching staff.

"It's a very good way to bring somebody that means so much to the history of this program back, especially into this building," Leitao said of Jones.

Then it will be time for the Cavaliers to establish a personality, in Leitao's estimation. That starts with defense, the second-year coach suggested. The Cavaliers come off a pre-Christmas, unfulfilling three-game trip to Puerto Rico. They were beaten by Appalachian State and Utah before getting by Puerto Rico-Mayaguez 59-52.

"I think what I've tried to do is control the gym a little bit more and a little bit better, and start the process of making sure that every time that we hit the floor [that] we have an identity," Leitao said.

 

Cavs' Pettinella out vs. Eagles
Richmond Times-Dispatch Dec 28, 2006

University of Virginia junior center Ryan Pettinella will miss tonight's game against American because of a knee injury. His long-term status has not been determined.

Five minutes into U.Va.'s game at Puerto Rico-Mayaguez last Thursday, Pettinella injured his knee and did not return. "Essentially what happened is he got his kneecap popped out, and it popped right back in," Virginia coach Dave Leitao said yesterday.

"We've done a number of different evaluations on it. We've got to probably wait until a little bit more swelling goes down. We have two or three options on the table, and probably in the next 24 to 48 hours, we'll determine which one will be the best course of action."

Pettinella, a 6-9 transfer from Pennsylvania, has started seven of the Cavaliers' 10 games. The Webster, N.Y. resident averages 5.1 points and 3.7 rebounds. He's shooting 68.8 percent. - John O'Connor
 

Jeff Jones has had little to do with Virginia since being fired as basketball coach in '98.ReadIn here and here and here 4 decks.
By Doug Doughty
981-3129

Few references to the Virginia-American men's basketball game tonight will include the names of Jason Williford, Kieran Donohue and Greg Lyons.

Those three members of the American staff are UVa graduates, as is the Eagles' head coach, Jeff Jones.

"To be honest with you, playing this game was not something that was my idea," said Jones, who was the point guard for the Virginia team that played in the 1981 Final Four and later served as the Cavaliers' head coach from 1990-98.

"If Jason and Kieran hadn't come up with the idea and pushed the idea pretty hard, I can't say that we would be playing even now. They just had a number of rational reasons and not just sentimental ones"

In eight seasons, Jones' teams made five NCAA Tournament appearances and won an NIT championship, but he was fired in 1998 after his final team went 11-19.

He will become the first former UVa basketball coach to bring another team to Charlottesville, and the circumstances had to be just right.

Jones did not return to Virginia for the ceremonial final game at University Hall last March and says he would not have returned if he didn't have a prior relationship with the Cavaliers' second-year head coach, Dave Leitao.

"It's time," Jones said. "It makes sense. We'll get a nice paycheck and we don't have to take an airplane ride, so we get to keep most of the money."

Jones said he is aware of teams this season which have gone on the road for paydays of anywhere from $30,000 to $90,000. The check that American will receive is somewhere in the middle.

Some of Jones' friends were opposed to the idea.

"The first thing that Dennis [Wolff] said when he heard it was, 'What the hell were you thinking?'" Jones said.

Wolff, the head coach at Boston University, was an assistant coach during Jones' first four seasons at Virginia and remains one of his closest confidants.

"We were on a pretty damn good roll," said Jones, who was 105-57 in his first five seasons at UVa. "Then, all of a sudden, the wheels came off. We treaded water for a while, but that last year was a very difficult time."

In addition to the won-lost record, Jones' final teams were plagued by off-court problems, most notably the arrest of post recruit Melvin Whitaker before he played a game for the Cavaliers.

Still, Virginia averaged more than 18 victories per year during the Jones era, compared to fewer than 17 wins per year in the six full seasons since his departure. UVa has made one NCAA appearance during that time and has not won an NCAA game during the post-Jones era.

Chances are, he will be received warmly tonight. It's not anything that he dreads.

"Dread would be a strong word," he said. "Who the heck knows what the reception will be?"

Jones has seen the outside of UVa's new 15,219-seat John Paul Jones Arena during trips to Charlottesville to see his children, but he has never been inside the building."

"I'm sure it will be a bittersweet experience for him as he looks around the new arena and thinks about what might have been," said ex-player Curtis Staples, who will be in attendance for tonight's game.

Staples, who set the NCAA 3-point record while a member of Jones' final team, had hoped there could be some sort of reconciliation.

"We talk," said Staples, something of a keeper of the Cavalier flame, "but I'd like to sit down and see how he really feels about coming back.

"It wasn't until he was gone that people realized how good they had it. I'm not sure I appreciated how good a coach he was until I was done playing."

Jones, 46, said he considers himself a member of the UVa men's basketball family.

When asked if he always felt that way, he pauses.

"The answer is, 'Yes, I always did,'" he said. "Time has passed. Feelings that may have been there at one time ... you kind of learn to accept things and move on."

The crowd for tonight's 7:30 tipoff is certain to include at least two of his children, daughter Madison and son Jeff Jr., both students at St. Anne's-Belfield in Charlottesville.

Another daughter, Meg, is a freshman at Wake Forest.

Once the youngest coach in Division I-A when he was named to succeed Terry Holland in 1990, Jones, then 29, is settling into middle age.

His younger daughter plays field hockey and lacrosse at STAB, where she is junior-class president, and his son, a 5-foot-10 seventh-grader, is a basketball and baseball player who could grow to 6-6 or 6-7.

Jeff Jones Jr. is not to be confused with another Jeff Jones, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard from Philadelphia who signed a letter-of-intent with the Cavaliers in November..

"A number of people have mentioned that to me," the original Jeff Jones said. "Most of it is along the lines of, 'Now that we've got another Jeff Jones, wouldn't it be great to get another Ralph Sampson.'"
 

Back to where it all began
Eight years after a bitter departure from Virginia, Jeff Jones returns to coach in Charlottesville tonight, a changed man with the same old methods.
BY DARRYL SLATER
247-4641
December 28 2006

Jason Williford's stomach churned as he poked his head into his boss' office. His mind wandered eight years back, to all the things he heard about the bitter separation his boss, Jeff Jones, endured with the University of Virginia. How the school that reared him went and pushed him out the door when everything soured.

Maybe Williford heard about Jones suffering through those final three seasons, vomiting so often before games that it scared his father, himself a former coach. Maybe he heard of the arrests that robbed Jones' roster of talent. Or the rumors that swept through Charlottesville when he and his wife, Lisa, were divorcing.

Whatever Williford heard, he knew this much: In two seasons, Jones went from being one of the nation's hottest young college basketball coaches, with 105 wins in his first five seasons, to being deemed expendable.

Little wonder, then, that Williford tread carefully after last season when he approached Jones about bringing his American University team to Charlottesville to play the Cavaliers.

"To be quite honest, I was afraid," Williford said. "I manned up. I said, 'Look, coach, I understand what happened. I know it's something you probably wouldn't like to do.'"

The way Williford tells it, Jones agreed to the game on the spot. And so it is tonight that Jones - the iconic point guard of Virginia's early 1980s glory days, the last Cavaliers coach to make waves in the NCAA tournament - will coach in Charlottesville for the first time in eight years.

He returns, he said, as a changed man, in his seventh season at American, located in Washington, D.C. Yet he remains tied to his old nature as a basketball purist.

The way Jones tells it, Williford helped talk him into coming back. "If I had sat down and really thought about it, I'm not sure we'd be doing it," Jones said. Mostly because he doesn't want distractions during the season. Because for Jones, basketball is just basketball, and that was always enough. All the other drama and pomp he could do without.

His wounds have healed, he said, so he shies from discussing his downfall at Virginia, which ended in forced resignation after the 1997-98 season. "A lot of time has passed, so that is, gosh, almost ancient history," he said. "The Virginia stuff is over, and it's been done and overdone."

But Jones, 46, he cannot ignore what his Virginia experience - 20 consecutive seasons as a player and coach, the last eight as head coach - did to him, how it shaped him.

Superficially, he has changed since departing Charlottesville. He is a few pounds heavier and coaches a Patriot League team, albeit a good one, that is a few steps slower than his old Virginia squads.

He is remarried and no longer vomits before games, a ritual so expected of him as a player and coach that some wondered what was wrong if he didn't puke. "Hopefully, I've grown up a little bit," he said.

Philosophically, little has changed. His American teams eat a pregame meal of grilled chicken, pasta and a potato - just like the Cavaliers did at the Aberdeen Barn in Charlottesville, when Jones was coach and during his playing days under Terry Holland. In the locker room before games, Jones still introduces a moment of silent prayer by saying, "Everyone in his own way." He picked that up from Holland, too.

Jones still has a point guard's eye for the court. "He sees the game kinda one play ahead," said American assistant Greg Lyons, who, like Williford, played under Jones at Virginia.

Lyons offered this moment from practice last week: As the players loafed through a layup drill, Jones stood on the sideline, talking to a recruit in town for his official visit. Jones appeared to pay the drill little attention, but when the players finished, he shouted at them: "We're not doing that drill again until you guys figure out how to do it the right way! Harder cuts, better passes!"

Said former Virginia assistant Pete Herrmann, now at Georgia: "He's very true to the game."

As a little kid in Owensboro, Ky., Jones attended practices at Kentucky Wesleyan University, a Division II school where his dad, Bob, was the coach. While Jeff's brother and friends ran around the gym, playing as kids do, Jeff sat silently, watching the monotony of practice.

He often sat silently through pain, too. During his freshman year at Virginia, his parents divorced. He bottled up the anguish. When his world collapsed around him in his waning days as Virginia's coach, he refused to let his players see him wince.

The series of unfortunate twists that followed Virginia's 1995 Elite Eight appearance and portended Jones' demise remains dizzying: recruit Melvin Whitaker never playing a game at Virginia after his 1996 arrest and jail sentence for slashing a man's face; 1995-96 leading scorer Harold Deane was arrested shortly thereafter during a scuffle at a Charlottesville club, though he remained on the team; Courtney Alexander led the Cavaliers in scoring as a sophomore in 1996-97, but Jones dismissed him after he was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend.

All of this while Jones and his wife hashed out their divorce settlement.

Years earlier, after Jones' playing career ended with a two-point loss to Alabama-Birmingham in the second round of 1982 NCAA tournament, Holland had said J.J., as everyone called Jones, could handle the disappointment because, "J.J.'s a rock."

Maybe on the outside. But inside, he was crumbling.

"I do think that the one aspect of the profession that maybe I wasn't prepared for (was) that emotionally, I had no idea ... what just moving over one seat (to be a head coach) drains on you," he said.

Those closest to him, like his father, saw the fallout, the constant anxiety, the vomiting before games. His dad, now 66, would ask him, "Is this really what you want to do? Is this worth it?"

Try as he might to shield his players, they knew he was spiraling. Some who envisioned themselves becoming coaches had second thoughts. "I saw how quickly you can go from having a good thing to being on the outs," said Willie Dersch, a sophomore in Jones' final season who now works on the floor of the American Stock Exchange.

Perhaps worst of all, the man who sealed Jones' fate was none other than Holland, who was then Virginia's athletic director. As a high school player, Jones picked Holland and Virginia over Dean Smith and North Carolina, a school with much more tradition and allure. Later, Jones named Holland the godfather for his second child, Madison.

Yet Holland and Virginia's brass couldn't tolerate seasons like Jones' final three: 12-15, 18-13, 11-19, with a 16-32 ACC record over that span. By the middle of his final season, most knew he was done, though for Jones, that did little to blunt reality.

"I think it took him a while to get over what had happened," said Boston University coach Dennis Wolff, a Virginia assistant in Jones' first four seasons and one of his best friends.

Jones and Holland, now East Carolina's athletic director, still talk occasionally. "Not a lot," Jones said. "It's, I guess, complicated. ... The relationship isn't what it once was. At least from my part, there's not any bitterness."

Holland did not return a message left on his cell phone.

Some close to Jones are surprised he is still at American - the once can't-miss coaching prodigy, the youngest coach, at 29, in ACC history, plugging away at a 4,500-seat home court. He has received interest from some schools, but he hesitates to move too far from his three children, who still live in Charlottesville with Lisa. "It's interesting," he said. "When your first job is your dream job, it kinda changes your perspective on a lot of different things."

Friends know he isn't promoting himself for every job, either. He wants none of that status-inflating posturing. Not when there are layup drills to sweat over. Because for all the pain and stress the game planted in his life, basketball is still just basketball, and that will always be enough.

"I go back to watching my father in the gym," he said. "He'd bring out the balls and he'd sweep the floors. Those are coaches. I think coaching basketball isn't about the Armani suits and all the publicity and all that stuff. That's great for some people. That's the absolute opposite of why I'm in it."