Tim Tai, Photo Editor

For the past two decades, the Yale men’s basketball team has been one of the dominant teams in the Ivy League — a sustained run of excellence characterized by the leadership of trailblazing head coach James Jones.

Currently in his 24th season with the Bulldogs, Jones is tied as the fifth-longest-tenured head coach in all of Division I basketball, making him the longest-tenured active Black coach in the division. 

“Certainly you feel good about coaching as long as I have,” Jones said. “Hopefully I can help another young Black man in the future.”

Jones began his coaching career as an assistant at the University of Albany — his alma mater — from 1990 to 95, and then served as an assistant coach at Yale from 1995 to 97 before taking on another assistant coaching position for two years at the University of Ohio. In 1999, Jones returned to Yale as the head coach, and has since recorded 370 career victories. Adding to his regular-season achievements, he has also led the Bulldogs to four Ivy championships, two Ivy League Tournament titles and four NCAA Tournament berths in his last seven seasons alone.

If Jones were to serve out the entirety of his current contract, which stretches until the 2030-31 season, he would become the longest-tenured Black head coach in Division I history, surpassing Temple’s John Chaney 1982 to 2006 and Georgetown’s John Thompson 1972 to 99. 

“I looked at guys like them and saw that someone could look like me and be successful in this field,” Jones said in reference to Chaney and Thompson.  

According to a March 2021 report released by the The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, 24.3 percent of all Division I head coaches are Black. Meanwhile, Black athletes make up 52.8 percent of all men’s college basketball players. 

Additionally, 82.3 percent of athletic directors across Division I schools are white, which Jones said represented the root of a larger representation problem. 

“People hire people that look like them; it’s just how this works,” he said. “It’s rooted in the systematic racism that occurs in this country.”

Yale Athletics has taken steps in recent years to improve its administrative diversity. Athletic director Vicky Chun, who began her tenure in 2018, is the first Asian American in University history to hold that position, and women’s basketball head coach Dalila Eshe, who was hired last Spring, is the first Black woman to serve as a head coach in program history. 

“Coach Eshe and Coach Jones are two incredibly talented and brilliant basketball minds, ” Chun told the News. “Having them at the helm of our basketball programs represents progress and is a step towards creating a more inclusive and equitable future for sports and beyond.”  

Together, Jones and Eshe make up two of the four total Black coaches across the sixteen men’s and women’s Ivy League basketball teams. Harvard University men’s head coach Tommy Amaker and newly-hired women’s coach Carrie Moore are the other two. 

Sydney Johnson — who was the head coach of Princeton University men’s basketball from 2007 to 2011 before accepting the head coaching position at Fairfield University — had high praise for Jones. 

“I’m thrilled for James to be at an institution that has supported him and celebrated him and allowed him to grow as a coach and leader,” Johnson said. “James’ presence as a bright, confident and accomplished African-American leader of student-athletes is a bit of an outlier even on his own campus. Folks may not realize that a student’s four-year relationship with their coach can be more impactful than a one-semester long professor-student relationship.”

Johnson was also quick to point out that, although Jones has thrived over the last two decades, there is still a frustrating lack of diversity and inclusion at Yale and other Ivy League schools. According to Yale’s faculty demographics from 2021, only 4 percent of the University’s faculty identify as Black or African-American.

At a school that emphasizes the importance of diversity, Johnson questioned why the institution’s actions have seemed to fall short of their words when it comes to the leadership of their athletic programs.

“A good question to ask is this: Would an Ivy League institution accept a similar lack of diversity and inclusion among its academic leaders across their campus?” he said. 

EJ Jarvis ’23 and Bez Mbeng ’25, key players on the current Yale men’s basketball team, both cited Jones’s authenticity as a key component of his character. 

“My first impression of Coach was that he’s a genuine person — he doesn’t just coach the basketball player, but he coaches the person as well.” Jarvis said. 

Mbeng added that Jones “has a great relationship with everyone on the team, and those individual bonds bring the team closer together.”

While acknowledging the overall underrepresentation of Black head coaches in college basketball, Jones pointed out that the numbers of Black coaches dip especially low amongst the NCAA’s major programs. 

In 2021, out of 77 head coaches at “Power 6” schools, just 13 were Black. Some conferences, like the Pac-12, still do not have a single Black head coach. 

“You look at the biggest teams, the coaches that are making millions and not paycheck-to-paycheck, the lack of representation is more extreme,” Jones said. 

Jones expressed uncertainty regarding whether those numbers will change in the coming years, but did say he was encouraged by the people of all backgrounds that have shown support for Black community activism in America, such as during the protests over the murder of George Floyd in 2020. 

This season, with the Bulldogs tied for first place in the Ivy League, Jones is eying his sixth Ivy League championship, with the ultimate goal of earning a fifth NCAA tournament berth.

“It’s amazing that he’s the longest tenured Black head coach still active today, I see why a school wouldn’t want to let him go,” Mbeng said. 

On Feb. 25, the Yale men’s basketball team will face off against Cornell University in the John J. Lee Amphitheater.