Hours after he was officially announced as the basketball coach at DeMatha Catholic, Mike G. Jones walked into the Copper Canyon Grill just off the Beltway in Prince George’s County. He was there to meet the one man who could relate: Mike K. Jones.
The pair were there that April day to discuss one of the most sought-after jobs in high school basketball. Mike K. Jones held it for 19 seasons, taking over from Hall of Famer Morgan Wootten after serving as his star guard and later his assistant.
A year after Jones left to become the top assistant coach at Virginia Tech, the school hired Mike G. Jones from St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes in Alexandria.
And so, the men met to discuss work.
“It was a long dinner,” Mike G. Jones, 47, said. “I just wanted to know all about DeMatha and its culture. Everything outside of the game. Because I know I’m stepping into some big shoes here.”
Just how big: In 46 years at DeMatha, Wootten won 1,274 games and 33 championships in the rugged Washington Catholic Athletic Conference. For 31 straight years, every senior on his teams received a scholarship offer. Mike K. Jones took up that mantle, winning 511 games and eight conference championships while churning out Division I and NBA prospects.
There is a legacy to protect. Now, after an uncomfortable season of transition and a much-discussed coaching search, the Stags are turning to an outsider.
“You have to embrace the high expectations here, because if you don’t they’ll drive you crazy,” Mike K. Jones said of his old job. “You have to want that.”
The public’s first look at the new Stags came in mid-June at DMV Live, a six-day college recruiting showcase held at DeMatha.
With college coaches gathering in the Hyattsville gym — including Mike K. Jones, front row, midcourt — the Stags split their first two games. They are young and a bit tentative and could use more size. Their defense was passionate if not always perfect.
The next day, DeMatha faced a true test — Baltimore powerhouse St. Frances Academy.
The Stags trailed, took their first lead early in the second half and held on for a 58-51 win. “It’s defense, bro,” Stags guard Isaiah Arnold told his teammates during a timeout. “They can’t win if they can’t score.”
In Jones, players and coaches say, DeMatha is getting a God-fearing, easygoing basketball junkie.
The Stags also are getting someone who knows how to play the game. By the time he graduated from Casady School, he was the leading scorer in Oklahoma City high school basketball history. He spent two years at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M before making the jump to TCU. In two years with the Horned Frogs, he averaged 19.5 points, six rebounds and five assists.
As a coach, Jones has been known to join in shooting drills or accept the occasional challenge of one-on-one.
“I know all about that,” former St. Stephen’s star Devin Ceaser said with a laugh. “I played him one day in the summer — he had a knee brace on, and I thought I was sweet. He got me.”
After college, Jones played 11 seasons overseas, including stops in Turkey, France and China. He then spent two years working for the Brooklyn Nets before settling into the D.C. area, where his wife had gotten a job. They have two sons, ages 8 and 12.
“I’m just with my family or doing something basketball-related,” Jones said simply. “When I’m not in the gym with my team, I’m in the gym with [my sons] or out on the soccer field or driving them around to practice.”
Jones knew since college that he wanted to coach, so he spent much of his playing days observing. He made notes of the things he liked enough to take with him. Perhaps the biggest influence on his basketball mind was the free-flowing, up-tempo pace of TCU coach Billy Tubbs. From the moment Jones took over at St. Stephen’s in 2017, he employed a breakneck system that emphasized relentless defensive pressure.
Winners of three straight Interstate Athletic Conference championships, the Saints were one of the few teams outside of the WCAC that consistently challenged that league’s top members.
The Saints’ fast-paced system took time to implement, and the first step in that process was conditioning. The same will hold true at DeMatha.
In Jones’s first practice with the Stags in early May, the staff asked players to run 10 laps around the court in three minutes. None of them made it. More running followed, and by the end of the session coaches had to help a few cramping Stags to their cars.
Under Jones, who will teach physical education and health at DeMatha, guards are expected to run a mile in less than 5 minutes 30 seconds and big men are expected to finish under 6:30.
“You have to bring energy and effort every time out there in this system,” said Stags senior Mason So, who followed Jones over from St. Stephen’s. “You have to get it going defensively, and once you do, everything on offense will come together.”
DeMatha’s search for a coach started with a January Zoom call in which the Rev. James Day, the school president, gave a 10-person committee a broad edict: Find someone who will “embrace the mission of DeMatha.”
It came at a precarious time in the history of this proud basketball program. Mike K. Jones had been a stabilizing force, an ever-calm and often brilliant coach who continued Wootten’s tradition.
When Jones left in May 2021, DeMatha moved swiftly to fill the vacancy with an interim coach. Pete Strickland, a former college coach and a Stags alum, was named to the role three days after Jones’s departure and coached the entire 2021-22 season.
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Some parents and alumni believed the school acted too fast and without enough consideration to the racial makeup of the school and program. They aired their frustrations in the summer before the season, and the public debate cast a dark cloud over the Stags’ campaign.
When DeMatha dropped to 6-4 just after the New Year, whispers about the trouble in Hyattsville grew louder.
“Got a little frustrating sometimes,” rising senior guard Jaden Winston said. “Everybody talking, everybody wanting to get their two cents in about DeMatha.”
The Stags got their season back on track and finished 21-7, but as a search committee sifted through candidates in late winter, DeMatha was looking short on talent and unsure of its future.
In March, people close to the search say, three finalists were submitted to the DeMatha administration: O’Connell Coach Joe Wootten, DeMatha assistant Daryl Greene and Mike G. Jones.
Joe, son of Morgan Wootten, had served as an assistant under his father around the same time Mike K. Jones did. In 1999, Morgan Wootten made public his intentions for Joe to take over the program, but those plans were not agreed to. Joe left to take over WCAC foe Bishop O’Connell shortly after.
Despite that history, several people close to the program said they believed the job would go to Wootten this time. If not, they said, Greene was surely the choice. Common knowledge held that DeMatha, with such a strong alumni network, was unlikely to choose an outsider.
Jones tried to treat the interview process as he would a basketball game, focusing on the key points to get across and hoping his strategy would pay off.
“I always get up for a challenge,” Jones said.
On April 14, DeMatha hired Jones, and he quickly made his vision clear.
“We want to be known as a team that’s disciplined, that plays super hard and that brings an exciting brand of basketball,” Jones said.
The victory over St. Frances at DMV Live may have provided the team, and the rest of the D.C. area, a preview of what’s to come. It was a gritty win featuring stretches of both ugly and beautiful basketball. It was a Mike G. Jones-style win, and it began a run of success for the Stags: In the second weekend of the event, DeMatha went 4-0, including an attention-grabbing 22-point win over reigning conference champ Paul VI.
“Maybe shocked them, but it didn’t shock us,” Arnold said.
There is confidence within the program now, five months before the season, and it is the internal life of a team that matters most. With DMV Live completed, the Stags can return to an insular existence. They will continue to learn, to grow, to run — and run and run and run. In the quiet of the practice gym, they will build the foundation for a new era of DeMatha basketball.