PRODIGAL 'SON
Seton Hall guard relishes second chance in NCAA
It was a pipe dream. Nothing more than a fantasy at the time.
Madison Jones was out of basketball, sitting on his couch, watching the NCAA Tournament. He had one year of eligibility left, one last chance to be a part of March Madness.
“I watched almost every game,” the 6-foot-2 graduate transfer recalled this week, as ninth-seeded Seton Hall prepared to face No. 8 Arkansas in an NCAA Tournament South Region opening-round game Friday in Greenville, S.C. “I’m thinking the whole time, ‘I should be out there playing. That’s where I want to be, that’s where I should be.’ ”
But many things had to go right. He had to find a school willing to give him a second chance — Jones was dismissed from the Wake Forest basketball team the summer following his junior year after being charged with driving while intoxicated. He also needed a program with the capability of reaching the sport’s premier stage and one that believed in his abilities a year removed from the game.
As it turns out, there’s a lot of Father Flanagan in Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard. Seton Hall needed a point guard after Isaiah Whitehead made the jump to the NBA, and Willard never forgot about Jones after recruiting him in high school. The coaching staff did its homework, talking to those close to Jones about the DWI and about how he responded to getting bounced from the team.
“Who am I to judge another human being?” said Willard, who has his own demons after he was arrested for driving under the influence in 2004 as an assistant coach with Louisville and was backed by then-boss Rick Pitino.
Two years after the incident, Willard lost out on his first head-coaching opportunity when Delaware pulled its offer because of the DWI.
“I think we all deserve second chances,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I’m a deeply religious person, but I think the only guy who can judge people is the guy above. If you make a mistake in the past, that’s the past.”
Jones sees it somewhat differently. Willard took a risk he didn’t have to take, gambling on him as a player, after he had spent a year away from basketball, and as a person. All this after Jones passed on the Pirates out of high school. When they met, the DWI came up, and Willard told Jones he didn’t care about the past as long as he had learned from it.
“What shows the kind of man you are is what you do after the mistakes,” Willard told him.
“It means the world to me,” Jones said, about Willard taking him in. “I can never thank him enough for giving me this second chance. It’s changed my life. It’s been a blessing in disguise, this whole thing.”
There was criticism from the outside at times this year, questions of whether Jones could produce enough offensively for Seton Hall to get back to the NCAA Tournament. After all, he was being asked to fill the role left by Whitehead, the team’s MVP last year. But Willard couldn’t have asked anything more of Jones, whose minutes (29.3 per game) went up when troubled backup Jevon Thomas left the program Feb. 8.
“The fan base may have gotten on him, but there’s not one time I was disappointed with Madison,” Willard said.
His numbers — 5.7 points per game, 3.2 assists, 2.4 rebounds and 1.8 steals — don’t tell the story. His 40 percent shooting from the field and team-high 1.6 assists-to-turnovers ratio doesn’t either. Jones has been steady, a calming influence in trying times. He had one of his best games in the Big East Tournament quarterfinal victory over Marquette, 13 points, two rebounds and two assists. Most importantly, he has fit in perfectly with the lunch-pail Pirates. Quiet, tough and defensefirst, it was like welcoming back a long-lost relative.
Jones spent the year away from basketball graduating from Wake Forest and spending time at home in Raleigh, N.C. In March, however, he didn’t miss a thing. He was glued to his television, imagining himself back on the court.
“I didn’t want to end my college career like that,” Jones said. “I was waiting for something great to happen.”