Jeff Jones Not Leaving for Green (and Yellow) Pastures

This is how I will always see Jeff Jones in my mind

First, my apologies for letting the blog sit idle lately. I'm graduating in about a week and things have been a bit hectic, while Bill's been preparing to ship off to grad school. That being said, there are no excuses for someone as AU Basketball-obsessed as myself, so please bear with me as we move further into the off season. I'm also going to fix that pesky bug that's only showing one story at a time this week most likely, in case it's bothering anyone else as badly as it is me.

The big news lately are the coaching vacancies at two nearby institutions, namely George Mason and George Washington. Jim Larranaga left a little over a week ago to take the head job at Miami, while GW's new athletic director "let go" of Karl Hobbs shortly after taking over. Jeff Jones, logically, was named as a potential candidate for both positions by major media outlets and the college basketball blogosphere alike. Fortunately, The Washington Post reported today that Paul Hewitt, formerly of Georgia Tech, has taken the Mason job. While the GW job is still open, it's fortunately looking more and more likely that we'll have a few more years of Jones sticking around Tenleytown.

I for one am thankful for this, as the thought of losing Jones made my heart briefly stop. Love him or hate him, he's turned our program completely around, and replacing him would be a tall order. In my opinion, there's not a better coach out there for us at the moment, although I'm sure some might disagree. That being said, Jones is rooted down in the area and likes it here (and his job security, I'd expect), and really the only positions that might be able to draw him away are local ones (unless, you know, we pull a Butler or VCU next season), so the timing of both GW and GMU losing their coaches in the span of a week wasn't particularly great. Oh, and we lost our award-winning wrestling coach to Oklahoma less than a month ago to boot.

Any thoughts on the DC coaching merry-go-round? Let us know in the comments. We'll be back to full strength shortly, so keep checking back for updates. My goal is to come up with a relatively regular posting schedule I can stick to a whole lot better than last summer, so stay tuned.

Pro Deo Et Patria,
Josh

AU MBB Team Adds Assistant Coach, Director of Basketball Operations

Per the Athletics website today, the AU Men's Basketball Team has added former Assistant Coach at Brown Lamar Barrett to the bench. This is a good pick-up because Barrett mainly handled recruiting at Brown and, with the loss of Robert Burke to Mt. St. Mary's, the team needed a coach to find future generations of Eagles. It's been widely suggested by the commenters on this blog that Jeff Jones finds little joy in recruiting, so it's good to see that he has found a high quality coach to go out and find some winners.

Replacing Bryce Simon (who, by the way, left his position with no fanfare or farewell from Athletics much to my surprise) as Director of Basketball Operations is Matt Wolff, '09 graduate of Boston University and son of former BU coach Dennis Wolff. Matt, like JJ himself, is a coach's son, and I hope he'll have no trouble filling Bryce's large shoes.

Welcome both of these folks to the AU MBB family.

On the rumor mill side, I've heard from a reliable source that AU will face both WVU and Pitt this season and participate in the Cable Car Classic at Santa Clara University. I'll keep you posted on other nonconference games as I hear about them.

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!

Bryce Simon Leaving Director of Basketball Operations Position

It's a sad day for us here at AUHoops as we announce the departure of Director of Basketball Operations and AU alumnus Bryce Simon.