‘I felt disappointed in myself’: How CCU basketball’s star flipped his script, is shining
DeVante Jones’ college basketball career at Coastal Carolina did not start the way he wanted it to.
It didn’t even start when he wanted it to.
Coming out of St. Augustine High in New Orleans, the guard was not immediately accepted academically to enroll at CCU, and he failed to qualify after getting a second chance through a summer program on campus before his freshman year.
He could have chalked it up to a bad experience and opted for a fresh start elsewhere, as two other basketball recruits who failed to qualify through the same summer program did.
But Jones chose to remain at Coastal and stick it out, and his career as a Chanticleer has turned out to be as good as he and the team could have hoped for.
Jones is putting together one of the more impressive careers in program history, and is perhaps the front-runner for the Sun Belt Conference’s Player of the Year award as he and the Chants prepare for a conference tournament next week in Pensacola, Florida, that they believe they can win.
“I was so focused on other things besides basketball,” Jones admitted. “I was a freshman and I didn’t understand the student-athlete life of being in college. I just took the athlete life and thought I could make it here. But they pride you so much on being a student-athlete, being a student first, so that was my fault and I came back and I learned from it.
“. . . I don’t blame nobody for what happened. It’s all on me, and that’s okay.”
A rocky start at Coastal
Jones had built a relationship with assistant coach Patrice Days through his recruitment when Days was at Wright State and Southern Utah in the two years before he joined the CCU staff prior to Jones’ freshman year in 2017, and he followed Days to Conway.
Jones’ mother, Felicia, also helped cement his decision. She cried with joy upon seeing the beach.
“When I see my mom cry it’s like, ‘Man, she’s happy.’ So I would have been wrong if I had picked another school. My heart was here, her heart was here, so it felt like home,” Jones said. “We don’t have a beach in New Orleans and this atmosphere was way different. So I loved the environment, and it felt like family when I met the coaches and teammates, so it was an easy decision for me.”
Jones was one head coach Cliff Ellis’ five recruits that year who weren’t accepted by CCU’s admissions office, and one of three placed in the Coastal Excellence and Leadership (CEaL) program that grants conditional admission to students who fall just below the university’s admission standards. They were required to make a certain grade in a summer class in order to enroll for the fall semester.
“We just had a good time,” Jones said. “We connected with all the other freshmen. They loved us because they knew we were on the basketball team. So it was so different from me being in high school. It was a great feeling every day, but we lost sight of the bigger picture, so it was something we had to learn from.
“. . . I felt disappointed in myself, like I let my parents down if anything. But once I didn’t make it they were my biggest supporters, telling me just to get back right. They still believed in me, and me hearing that from them it was just so heartwarming.”
Jones became eligible to play in the second semester of his freshman year, but he said upperclassmen including then-starting senior point guard Jaylen Shaw convinced him it would be better for him to sit out the entire year and retain his redshirt season, and they helped him prepare to start the next season.
“That was my first time really facing adversity,” Jones said. “It was a crazy feeling because I went through so many ups and downs while I wasn’t playing, watching the team play and watching them lose and knowing I could help be the game-changer. It was eating me inside a lot. But being around certain teammates and the coaching staff also it helped me understand the game and understand what I needed to do to help this team in the future. So I feel it really helped me mature a lot.”
He made an immediate impact in his return to the court. He averaged 14.6 points while starting 20 of his 22 games in 2018-19 to be named the Sun Belt Freshman of the Year despite missing 12 games due to an injury.
Last season he was named Second Team All-Sun Belt after increasing his points per game to 17.4 and shooting nearly 49 percent from the field and 87 percent at the free throw line.
Jones has scored 1,268 career points despite two of his three seasons being abbreviated by injury and COVID.
Best in the Sun Belt?
Jones, who is 6-foot-1, is second in the nation in steals with 3.2 per game, which trails only Jacob Gilyard of Richmond and leads the Sun Belt by nearly a steal per game, and is in the top-12 in the conference in at least nine categories.
Jones is second in the Sun Belt in scoring with 20.5 points per game, which is just two-tenths of a point behind South Alabama’s Michael Flowers and more than two points ahead of Louisiana’s Cedric Russell in third.
He’s also eighth in the conference in rebounds with 6.9 per game, fifth in field goal percentage at 50%, first in free throw percentage at 89% with 115 attempts, 12th in assists with 3.3 – Ebrima Dibba leads CCU and the conference with 5.2 – sixth in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.7, and ninth in 3-pointers per game with 2.1 while playing 32.7 minutes per game, which is ninth in the Sun Belt.
“I think my game has developed a lot,” Jones said. “Throughout the years you can see my numbers rising and I feel this year my numbers have made a big jump. This offseason I worked a lot on my shot, just making difficult shots knowing I’m going to see a lot of defenses. I feel like I’ve made a big jump with stats all across the board.”
He has been named a Mid-Major Player of the Week by College Sports Madness and the Sun Belt Player of the Week twice this season.
His defense has improved greatly. He said he was motivated by hearing people say he wasn’t a good defender last year, so he worked in the offseason on his leg strength and agility.
“He’s from the old school. He works so hard,” Ellis said. “. . . He’s usually one of the first guys in the gym and one of the last guys to leave. He just works on his game. He’s improved every year. . . . He’s developed his game to be able to score at all three levels. He’s got strength. He can go to the rack, he’s got a mid-range game, he’s got a three-point game and he shoots free throws and he defends. He’s gotten stronger in the weight room.
“He’s done all the things that needed to be done to make him the player that he is.”
Jones has gained a lot of strength since his freshman year, as he has added about 25 pounds primarily through weightlifting to now weigh about 200 pounds. “My coaches always told me, ‘Stay in the weight room. You’re going to need it. You’re going to take a lot of contact, a lot of physical abuse,’ ” Jones said. “Just me gaining all that weight and all that muscle, it has made the game really easier, like the game moves in slow motion for me.”
Jones was a point guard in high school and has been a point guard at CCU. But with the addition of transfer guards Tyrik Dixon and DeAnthony Tipler, and the return of Dibba from injury, Jones has moved largely to an off-the-ball guard position this season.
“It was a mutual understanding. We just felt like for us to be as good as we want to be I had to play off the ball and on the ball, and a lot of [pro] scouts also wanted that,” Jones said. “So with me playing off the ball that just showed them I can play on and off.”
Roles often change with the game on the line, however. “Towards the end of the game all my teammates know I want the ball in my hands,” Jones said. “I want to make those decisions, so we all have a good understanding of when I want the ball.”
Ellis has devised ways to get Jones into scoring positions without the ball.
“He’s such a scorer, we need him to score with our team, and if you’re coming up with the ball they’re already starting the defense,” Ellis said. “We’re trying to move him a little bit . . . and I think it helps his game.”
Jones still sees room for improvement in many areas of his game.
“I feel I can shoot the ball a lot better, I can do a better job of being a leader, and a playmaker,” he said. “I just feel like everywhere I can always get better, and know I can be a really good player knowing I’ve got more spots to improve on.”
CCU seeking a title
The Chants are 13-6 overall and 7-5 in the conference, and can finish as high as third in the 12-team Sun Belt with a pair of wins Friday and Saturday at Troy (10-14, 4-10) to finish the regular season. The Sun Belt tournament is March 5-8, and the winner earns an NCAA Tournament berth.
“I’m just worried about winning and leading this team and going back to the [NCAA] tournament,” Jones said. “It’s been a goal of mine since I got here as a freshman, so the first two years were hard for me not really winning. But this year since we finally have a chance to win this league, I’m just focused on that and nothing else really.”
The Chants showed promise early last season. They opened the 2019 Myrtle Beach Invitational in November with a 22-point win over then unbeaten Pac-12 member Utah to improve to 3-2 and had a six-point lead over Baylor, which went on to be ranked No. 1 in the country for several weeks, four minutes into the second half when Dibba injured his knee and was lost for the season.
CCU lost that game and finished 16-17 overall and 8-12 in the conference before losing in the second round of the Sun Belt tournament.
“Last year we had a special team. We had Baylor until Ebo [Dibba] got hurt. So I feel a lot of people were scared of us. We just had a lot of hope in that team,” Jones said. “So with Ebo going down that hurt us. But this year with Ebo being back and us gaining a lot of good players . . . it has made it easier for me and Ebo to be leaders of this team.”
Will the NBA come calling?
Jones, a communications major, has received attention from NBA scouts, and based on their feedback he believes he’ll be given an opportunity by an NBA organization after college.
“That’s been a goal of mine since I was young, since I was 8 I’ve wanted to play in the NBA, so I feel that’s a dream that’s close so we’re going to see where it goes from here,” Jones said.
Wanting to help his parents, Troy and Felicia Jones, is a motivator for him to have a successful pro career.
“My parents are the reason why I’m doing this, that’s motivation in itself,” he said. “Me seeing them work long nights and not getting much sleep, I’m tired of seeing them work. I want them to retire early and be able to live their life and go on vacation, so my parents is all the motivation I need.”
Ellis is sure Jones will be playing professionally.
“Without question he can play European basketball and I think he’ll get some [NBA and G League] looks and get some workouts when the time comes,” Ellis said. “Certainly he’ll be playing somewhere.”
In an interview with The Sun News, Jones did not commit to returning to CCU as a fifth-year senior. “I’m not really focused on the future right now, I’m just focused on the present, trying to win and get a Sun Belt championship,” he said.
The end to Jones’ CCU career – be it after this season or next – will certainly be more celebrated than the start.
“He’s turned out to be the leader on our team,” Ellis said. “He is a guy that our players respect and listen to. It’s been amazing to see his growth over the years. He’s been on top of everything we’ve asked him to do. He’s never caused us an ounce of trouble. His academics have been tremendous. You’d want your son to be like him, and that’s a pretty strong statement. He’s a treasure.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 6:26 AM.
