The Jones File
The Word On Rick Jones

Every since he can remember, Rick Jones has always wanted to be a baseball coach.

How much so?

He once accepted a high school job where he had to teach biology and serve as an assistant football and wrestling coach just to have a chance to pace the dugout. Later, he took a job as an assistant women's basketball coach, taught a full load of courses and ran the student-athlete study hall for two hours each day just to break into the collegiate baseball ranks.

Through it all, however, Jones' career choice proved to be a good decision as he has accomplished feats rarely duplicated in college baseball.

Entering his 15th season at the helm of the Green Wave program, 27th as a collegiate coach and 33rd as a coach overall, Rick Jones has lived a life of baseball and the game has given him multiple lifetimes worth of accolades and success stories both on and off the field.

Since taking over as head coach prior to the 1994 season, Jones has led Tulane to the NCAA Regionals in 11 of his 14 seasons - including a school-record nine consecutive trips from 1998-2006 - three regional championships and trips to the College World Series in 2001 and 2005.

Under Jones' tutelage, Tulane has 10 40-win seasons, including school-record 56-win seasons during both CWS years. His 2001 club set the school mark for winning percentage at .812 (56-13) and the 2005 club was a shade better at .823 (56-12). Since the turn of the century, Tulane is the 14th winningest baseball program among NCAA Division I teams with a 349-160-1 (.685) record since 2000.

In a 2007 study done by Baseball America, Tulane has had the most meteoric rise among college baseball programs from 1999 through the end of the 2006 season. The Green Wave rose 66 spots and ranked 16th among Division I programs following the inception of the Super Regional.

Baseball America honored the Green Wave again in January, naming Tulane one of 16 teams nationally to receive an "A" impact rating based on overall performance both on and off the field since the NCAA tournament field was expanded to 64 in 1999.

Forty-seven Wave players have earned all-conference honors on 71 occasions, including 43 first-team selections, and 16 have claimed C-USA All-Freshman Team recognition. In the 11-year history of C-USA, Tulane has had for more all-league honorees than any other school, and currently accounts for more than a quarter of the 162 first-team selections.

The student-athletes Jones has mentored account for 64.6 percent of Tulane's single-season record book and 60.1 percent of the career Top 10, and his teams combined to account for nearly half of the team records. Included in that list are top rankings in 46 of the 85 statistical categories.

The winningest coach in C-USA history, Jones was named C-USA Coach of the Decade in 2005 after helping Tulane win four Conference USA regular-season championships and the C-USA Tournament a league-record five times. A league-high four Tulane players were named to the C-USA All-Decade team - Michael Aubrey, Jake Gautreau, James Jurries and Chad Sutter - and Gautreau was named Player of the Decade.

Seven of the last nine C-USA Players of the Year were from Tulane, including a five-year streak from 1999-2003, to give the Green Wave more than every other league team combined. In addition, more then half of the C-USA Freshman of the Year have donned a Green Wave jersey, while two Tulane standouts have been named league Pitcher of the Year.

Conference is not the only level to recognize the Tulane program, though. At the national level, 18 players have received All-America recognition - including at least one every season from 1996-2006 - 12 players were named Freshman All-Americans, and five have earned positions on the USA Baseball National Team during the Jones era.

Professional scouts have also taken note on Jones' players as well. Major League Baseball teams have spent 38 draft picks on Tulane players - including three in the first-round and another in the sandwich round - since 1994, and a total of 52 players have signed professional contracts. Of the 38 draft picks, only six had been drafted prior to their arrival on the Tulane campus.

While Tulane has achieved unprecedented success on the diamond under Jones, it has enjoyed the same amount of accolades in the classroom as Green Wave players have earned C-USA Commissioner's Academic Honor Roll recognition 139 times since 1996, which stands as a direct testament to the level of student-athlete Jones has been able to bring into the Tulane program.

Since 1994, three players have earned Academic All-America honors, including James Juries and Tommy Manzella who became the first two Tulane student-athletes to earn athletic and academic All-America recognition in the same season in 2002 and 2005, respectively.

Every player who played four years for Jones has completed their degree, and several have gone on to prominent roles in their post-graduate life. While baseball has been the career choice of some, the list of former Jones players include Major Leaguers, Major League general managers, radiologists, lawyers, state representatives, accountants and health care workers.

Jones' impact is not limited to his players, however, as four of his former assistants are now collegiate head coaches: Brian Cleary at Cincinnati, Jim Schlossnagle at TCU, Buddy Gouldsmith at UNLV and Rob Cooper at Wright State. In addition, two of his former players are now college head coaches: Mike Kennedy at Elon and Steve Trimper at Maine.

For his contributions to college baseball, Jones has earned a trio of Conference USA Coach of the Year titles and has been named Louisiana Coach of the Year five times. Following the 2001 season, Jones earned his first Division I national coach of the year award when he was named the American Baseball Coaches Association/Diamond Sport Company Division I South Region Coach of the Year, and he was named National Coach of the Year by Baseball America in 2005.

In 14 seasons with the Green Wave, Jones has tallied a 600-284-1 record (.679), including a 244-118-1 mark in conference play, which is more wins than any other league school. Inheriting a team that had been to the NCAA Regionals seven times in its previous 101 years of existence, Jones took the Green Wave to the postseason in his first season, again in 1996 and every year from 1998-2007.

Winning and national recognition are nothing new to Jones, though, as he has achieved success at every stop of his coaching journey. Including previous head coaching stints at Ferrum (Va.) College and Elon (N.C.) College, Jones has tallied 876 victories and a .699 winning percentage.

Jones was also selected to help coach Team USA in 1990 where he served as the national team's pitching coach and recruiting coordinator. Jones helped Team USA win the bronze medal at the Goodwill Games and earn the silver medal at the Presidential Cup in Taiwan.

Before coming to Tulane, Jones was the assistant head coach at national power Georgia Tech from 1990-93 where he coached the pitchers for four years and served as the Yellow Jackets' recruiting coordinator for three seasons. During his stint in Atlanta, Jones helped the Yellow Jackets to four consecutive NCAA Regionals, and his recruiting classes were nationally ranked each year and included the likes of Nomar Garciappara and Jay Payton.

Jones' pitching staffs posted team ERAs below 4.00 in three of his four seasons at Georgia Tech. The 1992 staff finished the season 10th in the NCAA in ERA, while the 1993 staff finished sixth, marking the first times in Georgia Tech's history that a pitching staff ranked among the national leaders.

Prior to joining the Georgia Tech staff, Jones served as the head coach at Elon College where he helped the then-Fighting Christians (Elon has since renamed its mascot the Phoenix) to a 174-61 record from 1985-89. His .743 winning percentage is the best of any coach in the school's athletic history. Jones' Elon clubs won four NAIA District 26 titles and made three trips to the NAIA World Series, ranking in the Top 10 each year. In 1989, Jones led Elon to a 36-9 record and earned National Coach of the Year recognition.

While at Elon, Jones was a three-time NAIA District Coach of the Year, and earned Regional Coach of the Year and Carolina Conference Coach of the year honors twice. In 1989, Jones was tabbed the National Coach of the Year, earned Diamond Baseball National Coach of the Year honors for NAIA schools, and was inducted to the Elon Hall of Fame in October 2004.

Jones' collegiate coaching career began at Ferrum in Virginia where he led the Panthers to a 102-34-1 record from 1982-84, including a pair of Top 10 rankings. Jones began his coaching career at E.E. Smith High School in Fayetteville, N.C. Prior to his stop at E.E. Smith, Jones taught and coached in the Chatham County school system for three years.

A graduate of UNC-Wilmington where he was a two-year letterman on the Seahawk baseball team, Jones earned his master's degree at North Carolina A&T. He also attended Sandhills Community College in North Carolina where he played for two seasons.

Jones is married to the former Gina Zwan, a special education teacher in the Jefferson Parish School system.