Man of the Year: An Interview with the Norfolk State Head Basketball Coach
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Robert Jones is the head men’s basketball coach at Norfolk State University. In 2019, he won the Skip Prosser Man of the year award.
Coach Jones sat down with HBCU GRAD’s William Gregory to talk about basketball, HBCUs and success.
So Norfolk state university men's basketball coach was the MEAC coach of the year. You won the 2019 Skip Prosser Man of the Year award. You guys went to the NIT and made it to the second round. How does it feel to have accomplished all of this coach?
Coach Robert Jones: Although it might seem like it was just a magical year, it's been years, you know, that we've been working to get to this level. So to finally see some of that stuff come to fruition has been great for us and the university.
Did you choose coaching or did coaching choose you?
Jones: I choose B. I never thought about being a coach. I kinda got suckered into being a coach. During my last year of school, one of my assistant coaches got a head coaching job at a school 15 minutes away from my school and he asked me to come over to help work out with the guys cause I was still in pretty good playing shape and I was a decent player. So he asked me to come and help out. It went from helping out at practice to sitting on the bench during games and that evolved into coaching.
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Everybody has a method coach. So what would you say is your game plan to go out on the court and get a win every time?
Jones: I think that everybody has a game plan. A lot of times it goes wrong. I think the biggest plan, outside the X's and O's and actual schemes, is just to get everybody to play hard and be focused. If you could do those things no matter what you do X and O wise, it’ll translate onto the court. We talk to our guys all the time about playing hard, playing unselfish, and being focused on the task at hand. It's hard to win a college basketball game cause we're not the only team that's trying to win. You know, the other team is trying to win just as much as we are. So the winning team is the team that usually executes and competes the hardest for 40 minutes. So we try to be the team that executes and competes the hardest for 40 minutes. And, you know, we came out on top 22 times this year. So that was good.
Seems to be quite effective seeing as though y’all are the champions. What keeps you going through the losses, hardships and strain of the season?
Jones: There are ups and downs as coaches, wins and losses are competitive and you never want to lose. I think coaches get too much praise and they get too much blame. When a team loses, you know, it's the coach's fault. Even though we didn't make or miss a shot. We didn't miss a rebound. We didn't turn the ball over. And when the team wins, the coach is the reason. Once again, we didn't make a shot. We didn't make a pass or anything like that. I try to stay in the middle and level headed. And then also just keep in mind that from my humble beginnings to where I'm at now, it's been a long path. So every day, no matter if we win or lose the game, I feel like I've won already just by where I'm at currently. So that keeps me going and my son of course keeps me focused.
instagram/nsucoachjones
Do you think anything in the world would make you happier than being right here where you are now?
Jones: Yeah, about $5 million.
Overall with the kids that we have I feel that the program is in a good place. I feel like there's a lot of excitement about the program for next year. That's a good thing. It's a lot of fan excitement. Everywhere we go at this point, you know, everyone is still talking about the year we had. I just left Chick-fil-A and a lady stopped me and said, Hey, you guys did such a great job this year! So is this getting everybody interested in Norfolk state basketball? I don’t know but it feels like the old days they talk about. Hopefully we can recreate that.
