NORFOLK, VA (WTKR)- In the current landscape of college basketball, recruiting is all the more important. Teams must consistently reload to keep pace.
For the Old Dominion women's basketball team, that's where assistant coach Roland Jones Jr. comes in. He's the recruiting coordinator and spends countless hours on the phone and on the road looking towards the future.
"You try to find the most talent you can that you think can come in here and gel with what you have returning to build a perfect team in order to win," he noted.
"He knows exactly what I need," head coach Delisha Milton-Jones added. "I told him we need more size, we need better shooting if we want to cross that line, that threshold of becoming champions in the Sun Belt Conference."
Jones and Milton-Jones are married and the latter laughs that there are times of the year where they are passing each other in airports. Roland Jones steers the recruiting ship for the Monarchs and stresses the winning culture to lure players to the program.
"You have to have kids who know what it takes to win," he pointed out. "You might find a talented player who's never won anything and if you put them in this environment, nine times out of 10 it may not work to the best of their abilities or our abilities to coach them because they don't understand what it takes to win."
Jones says this year's squad might be the most talented the Monarchs have had during the Milton-Jones tenure with the program. 10 new faces grace the roster, joining the four returners already in Norfolk.
The Monarchs open their season November 4 at Ball State.
