After leading 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, Janell Jones returns for her fourth season as the head coach at Cal State L.A. A proven leader who has shown the ability to build winning programs throughout her career, Jones has taken a Cal State L.A. program that had just one winning season in the previous 10 years and led it to back-to-back winning seasons in 2012-13 and 2011-12.
The 21 wins last season equaled the standard set in 1978-79 and was just the third 20-win season in the program’s history. Jones has led the Golden Eagles to 39 wins over the past two seasons, which is the most over a two-year span since 1980.
Jones guided the Golden Eagles to a 14-8 record in CCAA play and a fourth-place regular-season finish, which was the best for Cal State L.A. since 2006. The Golden Eagles then beat No. 5 seed Cal State East Bay in the Eagles Nest, 67-53, and top-seed Chico State, 66-53, at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario in the semi-finals before dropping a heartbreaking decision in the title game.
Jones earned her 300th career win on Feb. 15 when the Golden Eagles beat San Francisco State, 75-60. She now has a 306-122 record in 13 seasons as a collegiate head coach, including a 46-42 record in her first three years at Cal State L.A.
The 2012-13 season was a sensational follow-up to a tremendous 2011-12 campaign.
Jones led the Golden Eagles to the CCAA Championship Tournament title game and into the NCAA playoffs for just the second time in the program’s history. Cal State L.A. made an impressive run in the conference tournament, posting road wins at Cal Poly Pomona and UC San Diego to reach the title game, where the Golden Eagles fell on a basket with no time remaining on the clock.
Cal State L.A. qualified for the NCAA playoffs as the No. 7 seed in the West Region and fell to eventual regional champion Alaska Anchorage in a hard-fought, opening-round game. The Golden Eagles finished the season with an 18-12 overall record and a 14-8 mark in conference play. The 18 wins were the second-highest single-season win total since 1987 and an 11-game improvement over the previous season.
Jones led the Golden Eagles into the conference tournament for the first time since it was brought back in an expanded, eight-team format in 2008. The Golden Eagles beat Cal Poly Pomona in Pomona, 80-78, after rallying from an 18-point deficit in the second half and then stunned top-seeded UC San Diego, 77-76, with a rally from 12 points down that culminated on a 40-foot, 3-point basket by Lorin Hammer with less than one second remaining. The Golden Eagles erased all of a 20-point deficit in the championship game before eventually falling.
Jones has turned other programs around in her storied career, but perhaps none quite this dramatically. Cal State L.A. had won a total of 28 games in the five seasons following its first-ever NCAA appearance in 2006. The Golden Eagles were just 4-23 in 2009-10, the year before Jones arrived.
Jones began the process of rebuilding the Golden Eagles in 2010-11 and guided the team to more overall and conference wins than the previous year despite a number of injuries to key personnel.
The Golden Eagles battled through a challenging season that featured a non-conference victory over Western Oregon and the first season sweep of Cal State Dominguez Hills since 2006.
Jones picked up her first win for the Golden Eagles in dramatic fashion in the season opener at Academy of Art on Nov. 14, 2010. The Golden Eagles got a basket with 1.4 seconds remaining in regulation to send the game into overtime and then went on for a 73-69 win.
Jones led the Golden Eagles to wins in their first three games and the team was 6-6 after 12 games before the injuries really took their toll.
Jones came to Cal State L.A. after compiling 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.
