Mar. 22--SAN ANTONIO -- Tony Jones remembers the long bus rides, the smaller arenas, and the frustration of not making the NCAA tournament field. In his five seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Toledo, Jones covered the Midwest in a motor coach with the Rockets, and by car while tracking down recruits.
"My career has kind of gone in stages," Jones said yesterday at the Alamodome, where tonight No. 1 Ohio State meets Tennessee, Jones' current team. He spent four seasons at Wisconsin-Milwaukee after leaving Toledo, and then moved on to the associate head coach job with the Volunteers in 2005. Jones has been with Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl since his days at UW-Milwaukee.
"And it's all about getting to the highest level. We had some good teams at Toledo, but we were not fortunate enough to get to the NCAA tournament. At Milwaukee, we got there twice and made the Sweet 16 once. Now we've been here two years in a row with Tennessee, and we're playing the No. 1 team in the country."
Jones, a native of Detroit, played college basketball at Fisk University in Nashville and spent three seasons on the staff at Buffalo before coming to Toledo. He said the experience has been all a coach could ask for, or dream about.
"Life is good, and it's been an unbelievable ride for us," Jones said. "Not just playing in the tournament four of the last five years, but here we are right now, we're two games away from making the Final Four. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity.
"Tennessee is a place where you have the resources, you have the facilities, and you have the support to win a national championship.
"It is still a terribly difficult thing to do, and with Ohio State, it is a daunting task to beat them. Maybe we wouldn't win a best-of-seven series with them, but here, on this stage, we only have to win one game."
SCARE TACTIC: Pearl likes the way his team has been playing, and joked yesterday that if undersized senior forward Dane Bradshaw could just shoot, the Volunteers might be unstoppable. Bradshaw, who does everything else to excess, shot only 35 percent from the field this season.
"Right now, we're scary," Pearl said. "If he could shoot, we'd be stupid scary."
Bradshaw, a masters candidate who earned his undergraduate degree at Tennessee in just three years, said it is all part of a long-term strategy.
"For four years, I've been building up a false scouting report, waiting for a moment like this," Bradshaw said.
WHAT'S COOK'N: Ohio State freshman Daequan Cook is mired in a shooting slump that came on as the season wound down, persisted through the Big Ten tournament, and through the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. The Dayton Dunbar product said he is confident he'll find the range soon.
"I've had about five or six games where I have not been shooting well, so I think it is time for me to step up," Cook said. "At the beginning of the season I was coming off the bench and giving the spark. Now I am just trying to find my shot. It's not a big concern of mine, since I know my shot will come back."
HOME JOB: Memphis guard Antonio Anderson is a bit concerned about facing Texas A&M here tonight, just a couple of hours from College Station, home of the Aggies. Memphis played its first round games in New Orleans, a considerable distance farther.
"It's not really the same," Anderson said. "We were what, five hours away? And that wasn't home for us. This is home for them. They are going to have a lot of fans that will probably get them into it. But the pressure will be on them to win in front of their own fans."
BAD BLOOD: With Memphis and Tennessee both here in the four-team field for the South Regional, should we expect their fan bases to meld and back both teams from that state?
"I think it would be really hard for Memphis fans to root for Tennessee," Volunteers coach Pearl said. "Really hard, although it would be great."
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