After 174 wins at Radford University, men’s basketball head coach Mike Jones is apparently on his way to head up the program at UNC Greensboro.
By Marty Gordon
Though neither school had made an official announcement at press time, it appears Radford University men’s basketball head coach Mike Jones is apparently taking the men’s basketball head coaching job at UNC Greensboro.
This past season, Jones guided the Highlanders to a 15-12 record and a 12-6 Big South slate. Radford finished in second-place in the Big South after the team was picked sixth in the preseason poll. He also led Radford to its fifth straight Big South Tournament semifinal appearance.
At UNC Greensboro, Jones will replace Wes Miller, who left last week to take the Cincinnati job.
Jones went 174-150 at Radford, leading the Highlanders to one NCAA Tournament appearance and two regular season titles in the Big South. Jones is the third-winningest coach in Radford history. Eighty-seven of those wins came against Big South competition. Jones has completed nine seasons at the helm of the RU men’s program after taking the position in 2011.
The 2017-18 season was arguably Jones’s most successful. He was named Big South Coach of the Year and NABC District 3 Coach of the Year after leading the Highlanders to a Big South championship and playing in the NCAA Tournament for the third time in program history.
Jones spent the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons at Virginia Commonwealth University, which included a magical run to the 2011 Final Four with wins over USC, Georgetown, Purdue, Florida State and Kansas. The Rams posted 55 wins over the final two seasons while Jones was on the Shaka Smart’s staff, the highest two-year win total in program history.
Prior to his second coaching stop in Virginia at VCU, Jones served a six-year stint on Dennis Felton’s bench at Georgia from 2003-09. In 2008, Georgia advanced to the NCAA Tournament when the sixth-seeded Bulldogs won four games in three days to complete the most improbable SEC Championship run in conference history, which included a tornado striking the Georgia Dome and the tournament being moved to the Georgia Tech campus.
UNC-G is coming off a 21-9 record and berth in the NCAA Tournament, winning the Southern Conference this past season. Miller’s salary was just over $300,000, while Jones’s base amount at Radford was $230,000 per year.