Q&A with USUE’s Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach Ray Jones
The men’s basketball team at Utah State University Eastern last season had 10 European players. Ray Jones, the team’s assistant coach sat down recently with the Sun Advocate to discuss the school’s recruiting pitch.
Jones is entering his second season as assistant coach at USUE. Before joining the staff in 2017, Jones worked for his alma mater, Southern Utah University helping with the Thunderbird basketball team. Jones also played professionally overseas for four years.
Q: Ray, when you guys are recruiting a kid from overseas, what is your pitch? What are you guys trying to sell them to get them to come here?
A: I think recruiting from Europe is a lot like anywhere else in America or anywhere else around the world. Every school is different, every culture is different. Here, me and Vando (USUE’s Head Basketball Coach Adjalma Becheli) really believe in selling a product we believe in, to the point where you’re no longer really selling it as much as you are just stating what you represent.
We’re very genuine with the things we do and it’s not so much a pitch. We introduce them to the fact that we’re not a huge school, we’re not flashy, we’re not a Vegas school, we’re not a school with endless funds, we’re not in a big city like Salt Lake. But what we do have is a family spirit.
Vando is a big family guy and I’m a big family guy and there’s a certain love that comes with that that you try and give to whomever you’re recruiting. You build that relationship, recruiting and relationship have to go hand and hand. That’s something that we believe in, so with the love that we give, we like to let the recruits know that that comes with accountability.
Pushing you to be a better person, not just a basketball player. It comes with things outside of basketball that we believe will help you become a better person and player.
Q: When the players get here, what is the adjustment period like?
A: I think we, Vando being from Brazil and me having played in Europe for four years, our comfortability with everything is something that we do have an edge on. There’s an adjustment period for sure. There was an adjustment period for every season I played over in Europe. Then with Vando coming to America, he obviously had to adjust as well. It’s a lot about patience. It’s that relationship that we talked about, there’s going to be times when they struggle with things. Whether it’s on the court with the style, the culture may be a little different.
But when you have more than one foreigner that’s something that they have in common, so that common ground becomes a normal thing now.
Q: How do you guys find these players, do you guys make trips oversea a lot? Do the players come to camps in the states? How does all that work?
A: WhatsApp helps a lot. WhatsApp is the app that we use to talk and text to Europeans or other countries. I have it, Vando has it.
If we were a bigger school, Division I, they make trips across the country. Vando and I will go to Brazil and do a little bit of that, but we don’t have the funds to go and visit every player.
A lot of it is reputation and relationship-based. This thing has to be bigger than basketball. When people see you’re genuine people, they tend to tell other people about genuine people.
People want good things for good people. We had a player named Milan (Milan Surlic) last year who was good for us. He’s from Serbia. With that we have Matija (Matjia Novikovic) and Ognjen (Ognjen Pantovic) from Sebria as well; and this year we have a kid named Phillip coming from Serbia and so you see the connection there.
It just keeps on going and going. I think we’ll have a Serbian pipeline for a while now and that comes from the relationship we try and establish.
Q: How many European kids to you have coming for this next season?
A: I believe we will have eight. Two Brazilians, two returning Serbians, two new Serbians, one from the Czech Republic, and an Australian.
It’ll be cool. It’s a cool culture, a whole lot of different environments brought into one thing.
It’ll be fun. I learn some new languages all the time, I learn some cool words. It’s always a good time. I would advise anyone, when they have some free time to come check out one of our practices.
You’ll hear so many different languages and see so many different characters. It’s an entertaining thing for sure.