A successful veteran coach with in-depth knowledge of the CCAA, Janell Jones will join head coach Molly Goodenbour as an assistant coach for the CSUDH women's basketball team.
Jones previously coached at Cal State L.A. for four years, where she led the Golden Eagles to a program record-tying 21 wins and a second straight trip to the California Collegiate Athletic Association Championship Tournament title game, turning around a program that had just one winning season in the previous 10 years before leading CSULA to back-to-back winning seasons in 2012-13 and 2011-12.
The 21 wins equaled the standard set in 1978-79 and was just the third 20-win season in the program’s history. Jones led the Golden Eagles to 39 wins over a two-year stretch, the most over a two-year span since 1980.
Prior to her stint as a Golden Eagle, Jones compiled 260 career victories in three previous coaching stints at Mercer, UC San Diego and Oklahoma City, where she won two NAIA championships, was a national runner-up three times and named NAIA Coach of the Year two times in her five seasons as the head coach.
Jones spent three seasons at Division I Mercer, where she helped transform a struggling program. She took over a Mercer team that won only five games in 2006-07 and guided the Bears to a 17-14 record and their best season since 1992 just two years later. Mercer enjoyed the biggest RPI turnaround in the country, jumping from No. 315 at the conclusion of the 2007-08 season to No. 162 in the final week of the 2008-09 campaign. She guided the Bears to their first conference tournament victory since 2006 as well in 2009.
Jones led Mercer to a 14-16 overall record in 2009-10 and the Bears were 11-9 in Atlantic Sun Conference play, their best conference mark since 2004. The Bears earned the No. 2 seed for the Atlantic Sun Tournament, which was their highest seeding since 1991. The Bears also had a first-team All-Conference player for the first time since 2002 and a first-ever conference Defensive Player of the Year. She also recruited the conference Freshman of the Year.
Jones joined Mercer after a sensational two-year run at UC San Diego, where she compiled a 50-10 overall record and led the Tritons to the NCAA Division II playoffs in consecutive seasons. The Tritons hosted and won the West Region championship in 2007 and advanced to the national semi-finals for the first time at the Division II level. The Tritons fell to eventual national champion Southern Connecticut State, 57-53. Jones was named the CCAA Coach of the Year in 2007 and one of her players, Leora Juster, was named a Division II first-team Kodak All-American. The Tritons won their first-ever CCAA championship in 2007 and Juster earned her second straight conference Player of the Year award.
In her first year at UC San Diego, Jones led the Tritons to a 23-5 record and a second-place finish in the CCAA with a 17-3 mark.
Prior to UC San Diego, Jones was the most successful coach in Oklahoma City University history. She was part of four NAIA Division I national championship teams, two as a head coach and two as an assistant coach. She had an overall record of 175-14 (.926) in five seasons as the head coach and her teams never finished a season with less than 32 victories.
At Oklahoma City, she coached five Kodak All-Americans, including two Kodak Players of the Year. She was named the NAIA Coach of the Year in 2001 and 2002 after leading the Stars to national championships in both seasons. One of the players she recruited and coached was All-American Miriam Sy, who was drafted by the WNBA’s Washington Mystics in 2006.
Jones joined Oklahoma City as an assistant coach in 1998 and promptly helped the Stars win their first of four straight national titles. She also helped several players to compete professionally in leagues overseas while at Oklahoma City.
Before joining the Oklahoma City staff, she was an assistant coach at Oral Roberts in Tulsa, Okla. That followed a three-year career as the head coach at Carl Albert High School in Midwest City, Okla. She compiled a 69-13 record and led the Titans to the 1996 Oklahoma City Class 5A State Championship. Her program produced three NCAA Division I players, including Paige Sauer, a former WNBA player.
Jones earned a bachelor’s degree in science education, summa cum laude, from Oklahoma Christian University, where she was a member of the women’s basketball team. She completed a master’s degree in educational leadership, summa cum laude, from Southern Nazarene University.
In addition to her coaching duties, Jones has also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association.
She has one son, Kyle Jones, who graduated from the Mercer University Medical School and is now a nurse anesthetist at Bone & Joint Hospital in Oklahoma City, OK. He is married to Katie Proctor and they welcomed their first child, Ramsey Kade, in 2011.
(August 2015)
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