A boisterous, standing-room only crowd filled up Benson Gymnasium – the home of Rivers basketball – in early March. But by halftime, it was silenced.
Rivers, in its quest for a NEPSAC Class B title three-peat, trailed rival Brooks by 13 at halftime in the semifinals. The favorites were on the ropes. The Red Wings needed a big second half to keep their dream alive.
And just like he did so many times, Jay Jones answered the call.
As Rivers made its comeback, Jones had his fingerprints all over it. He made big shots, including a massive four-point play. Inside the final minute, he facilitated the game-winning play when he drove the lane and found Ryan Altman for a go-ahead bucket. And then he saved his best for last with a play that demonstrated his growth. Defending Alex Wilkins, Brooks’ best player, Jones was beaten on a drive but recovered in time to swat Wilkins’ layup away before Rivers held on in the final seconds for a thrilling win.
A day later, Jones and Rivers claimed their third consecutive championship.
It wouldn’t have been possible without Jones. The run personified the 6-foot-5, do-it-all, Penn-bound combo guard with a knack for big plays who became one of the best talents in the region. It didn’t come as a surprise. Jones comes from a basketball family. His father, Joe Jones, is the longtime head coach at Boston University. His uncle, James Jones, is the longtime head coach at Yale. And his sister, Sydney Jones, plays at Bowdoin College. Jay has always breathed basketball.
But it also didn’t come by accident. While Jay has great pride for his family and his roots, he never wanted to be given anything he didn’t deserve because of his name. He earned everything he got.
“He never wants anyone to think he’s getting anything because of who I am,” Joe said. “He wants to be acknowledged for who he is and what he brings to the table.”
His own person
Jay Jones heard the jokes and the ribbing from people at a young age who knew his dad was the coach at BU.
“Kids and some adults would be like, ‘Oh, he’s just going to go to BU. He’s set. He doesn’t really have to work as hard as everybody else,’” Jay recalled.
“Even in middle school, kids would be like, ‘Oh, he’s just going to go to BU,’ or like, ‘When are you committing to BU?’”
“I feel like that motivated me even more.”
It didn’t faze Jones, who was focused on forging his own path in basketball. He was around the game constantly as a kid, going to his dad’s games and practices at BU and becoming friends with the players. While he played some soccer and baseball when he was younger, his love was always hoops.
But his dad never pushed him in that direction.
While basketball was a big part of their lives, the sport never defined their close relationship. To this day, most of their conversations aren’t even about basketball. “More about life,” Jay said. Joe picked his spots. When Jay was younger, Joe would train him, but it was important to him that he didn’t overdo it so that his son could set his own pace and learn to enjoy and love the game instead of feeling any kind of pressure.
“I never wanted to be a father that got in the car with my son and started grilling him about things that he didn’t do on the floor,” Joe said. “I was always dad. I was always there to kind of talk with him when he was going through a tough time and reinforce things that I thought I needed to reinforce. I would kind of wait. If I thought there were some major things that I saw, I would kind of wait when he was young until the next time we got on the floor and we would kind of talk about that.”
As Jay grew, his dad made it a point to check in a few times to make sure he was in the right space.
“I said to him, ‘You do not have to do this. Never feel obligated to play. If you want to play, play. If you don’t want to play, it’s fine,’” Joe recalled. “He knew I meant that, that I had my career and I wanted him to have his own.”
It was sixth or seventh grade the last time they had that chat. It became clear there was no issue.
“Once he got to eighth and ninth grade, it was like, ‘OK this is a wrap, this guy loves it,’” Joe said.
Joe’s hands-off approach worked. It never felt forced for Jay, who grew to love the game while around his dad’s teams. The BU players always gravitated toward him and made him feel like their own. He was celebrated in the locker room, played 1-on-1 and NBA 2K video games with them. They became fast friends with Jay and followed him on social media as his young career unfolded on the court, where Joe never stepped out of turn.
“He kind of let me fall in love with the game,” Jay said. “I think that’s what’s really helped me the most because I see a lot of kids, their dads kind of force them into it. And he let me find my own love for it.”
Keeping it father-son
Jay never really played basketball with thoughts about his future in the sport or if he could play at the Division 1 level, but his growth started trending in that direction around the eighth grade. He joined the Middlesex Magic AAU team and played on their sophomore team as a freshman, and after some early growing pains, became one of their best players. And after spending his freshman season at Brookline High School, he transferred to the Rivers School.
Jay came off the bench as a valuable contributor as a sophomore, and the following summer was crucial for his development. He trained with Rivers teammate and UMass commit Jayden Ndjigue, and watching how he worked inspired him. Then some college offers started rolling in, first from Stonehill and then Bucknell.
As the college interest picked up, BU was never on the radar. Both Jay and his dad were aligned on that as he continued to create his own path.
“There wasn’t one minute that I ever thought I’d coach my son,” Joe said. “Not one minute. I mean that. Like, people were saying that to me as he started to improve and I never thought that was something that would be good for either one of us. I’ve really thought he’s always wanted to be his own person, and that was very obvious from a young age. He wanted to be his own guy.
“The way our relationship is, it would completely change the fabric of our relationship. I’ve always been the guy that when he’s had some tough moments, I’ve been the guy that’s been the listening ear and been the guy that’s supported him. And this would change that dramatically.”
Added Jay: “We always talk about keeping our relationship separate from basketball and being father-son instead of coach-player. We feel like that would interfere with how we live our lives.”
Last summer, Jay’s college interest bloomed as his offers reached double digits from low- and mid-majors, but he wasn’t pulled toward any school yet. He soon realized he wanted to go to an Ivy school – a good basketball league with obviously great academics – and he ultimately got offers this past winter from several of them. He landed on Penn for several reasons. He was blown away by the campus, city and social life – but just as importantly, the coaching staff treated him as his own person and not just Joe’s son.
Jay said there were some schools whose coaches talked to him about his dad, and he felt like he was only being courted because of that relationship and not him solely as a basketball player. He craved authenticity, and appreciated that Penn coach Steve Donahue – who coached as an assistant alongside Joe for one season at Boston College – didn’t make that relationship a factor in the recruitment process. One of Penn’s assistants actually called Jay before his official visit telling him he didn’t need to bring his dad because they wanted to focus on him. Jay brought his dad anyway, but that resonated with him.
“That was awesome because they were really worried about me as a player and worried about me, and not worried about the relationship with my dad,” Jay said.
Blazing his trail
When Jay joined Rivers, his defense was not exactly his strength. He didn’t go as far as to say he was a liability, but over three years, he knew he needed to show something to coach Keith Zalaski, who hid him a bit on defense and put him on weaker offensive players.
“I was trying to prove myself to him in a way, because he would always make jokes about my defense,” Jay said.
He ultimately did. By his senior year, he was routinely defending the opponent’s best player and had developed into one of the team’s strongest leaders. In a huge season-opening win over Vermont Academy, Jones was instrumental in Rivers’ double-digit second-half comeback with big shots and strong defense on Arizona State commit Joson Sanon.
“(He) kind of stepped up into it, like let’s do this thing,” Zalaski said. “We got a good group, and you need guys to step into roles and for me, I just saw a different level of focused, competitiveness where it was like, ‘I’ll do anything out here to put us in a spot to win,’ and really just carried that through the rest of the year.”
Jones will play this summer with the Middlesex Magic then do a postgraduate season at Cushing Academy before taking off for Penn in the fall of 2025. He’ll continue his basketball journey like he always has, tirelessly working to prove himself and make his own name, with his dad watching on with great pride.
“You could lean on your dad and you could lean on people, but from a confidence standpoint and from a life standpoint, you want to be the one generating your own work and generating your own confidence,” Zalaski said. “I think they have a really special relationship in that way where yeah, they talk basketball here and there, but their relationship isn’t based on basketball, which I think is really healthy. It’s a hard thing to find when your dad has been in it for a long time, is an unbelievable coach, his kid is passionate about it. That could be a central piece of their relationship, but I don’t think it is and I think they’ve done a really good job of finding that balance. …
“He wants to blaze his own trail, he wants to do his own thing,” Zalaski continued. “That’s not easy these days where it’s hard to make it happen, it’s hard to make it work. Some people really lean on their connections and all those things and I think he’s just that kind of a person where he works really hard and he wants to be recognized for that work and kind of stand on his own. I think his dad wants that too, I think he loves that about his son and their relationship. Their relationship is really strong, and the reason it’s strong, I think it’s because it’s not built around basketball. It’s built around their father-son relationship.”
