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The Basketball Podcast: EP393 with Mike Jones on UNCG Defensive Identity
Mike Jones is the head coach at UNC Greensboro, where he has continued his winning tradition with three consecutive 20-win seasons. Prior to joining UNCG in 2021, Jones spent a decade as the head coach at Radford University, leading the Highlanders to 174 wins, two Big South regular season championships in 2019 and 2020, and a Big South tournament title in 2018. That same season, he guided Radford to its third-ever NCAA Tournament appearance and was named both Big South Coach of the Year and NABC District 3 Coach of the Year. He earned a second Big South Coach of the Year honor in 2020 and was a finalist for the Skip Prosser Man of the Year award in 2019.
Under Jones, Radford made postseason appearances in the College Basketball Invitational in 2014 and 2015, and recorded five seasons with at least 20 wins. His teams earned notable victories over programs such as Northwestern, Richmond, Notre Dame, and Texas. Before his head coaching tenure, Jones served as an assistant at VCU under Shaka Smart, helping the Rams reach the Final Four and compiling 55 wins over two seasons—the most in any two-year span in program history.
Earlier in his career, Jones was an assistant coach at Georgia under Dennis Felton, where he contributed to the Bulldogs’ 2008 SEC Championship and NCAA Tournament berth. His coaching journey also includes assistant roles at West Virginia, Richmond, Furman, and Howard, as well as a head coaching stint at Sidwell Friends School. With an overall record of 252–199, Jones has built a reputation for competitive success, player development, and leadership rooted in integrity. His mentors include George Felton and Shaka Smart, both of whom helped shape his approach to coaching at the highest level.
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Mike Jones Quotes:
“They don’t have to be great defenders coming in the door. They have to be willing defenders. And then, we look for some instincts that they might have or if they’re athletic . . we look for guys like that on the defensive end, but we try to teach them basic fundamentals.”
“We start with stance. We start with guarding the ball when it’s not live. So, hand positioning, feet positioning, where we want to influence the ball . . and then from there, we progress to closeouts and being able to get to the ball in a hurry and contest shots and stop drives.”
“It’s very basic, don’t let a guy have an open shot. So, no layups, no open shots . . we’ll give up mid-range contested jump shots, we’ll contest threes, we’ll make you score through us at the rim.”
“We want to get the ball on one side and keep it there. Don’t let it change sides of the floor. Don’t let them drive to the middle. So, if they drive anywhere, they’re driving to the baseline, where a lot of our help is built. We want to be able to limit the area that the offense can operate in.”
“We have a basic package that we do every single day, whether it’s game day or we’re just starting off in the preseason. The only variation is how long we go. We start with closeouts every day. Sometimes they’re dummy closeouts. Sometimes we have a live offensive player who’s attacking you as you close out.”
And then from there we do our gap defensive principles. We’ll vary up and overplay from time to time, but not very often. It’s mostly gap coverage to keep people out of the lane . . and then from there we’ll work on our rotations.”
“How do you win a closeout? What does that mean? That means you’re not going to give up an open shot. You’re going to, at least, get there in time to contest it and make them see your hand. You’re not going to let them beat you off the dribble.”
“We want to load our whole defense to the ball. And so teams want to skip the ball . . We work on being able to close out and be there on the catch on a skip pass. We also work on not letting them make rocket skip passes where it’s on a line. We want to pressure the ball and make them have to throw it a little higher. That gives our defense a chance to recover to the ball a little better. But we absolutely want to load to that ball.”
“Icing the ball screen helps a couple ways. The main way it helps is, it attempts to keep the ball out of the middle. I think guards are 10 times more dangerous when they get the ball in the middle . . it also helps with the bigs, they don’t have to run all the way out and get fouls because they’re out there trying to hedge . . we keep the bigs in confined spaces. And then we try to get our guards to be aggressive and physical, to get over that screen, keep the ball on the side and get back in front of the ball.”
“We hit anything coming toward the ball . . we do want to be physical, especially on the strong side . . and guys cutting to the basket. We want to make sure that they feel us. Anybody cutting to the ball, whether they’re flashing into the high post or flashing low, we want them to feel us. When they’re coming off of screens, we want to be physical on the screen, especially if you’re guarding a cutter.”
“You’re reacting to the offense . . the defense always has to react. We want to change that narrative. We want to tell the offense what they can do as opposed to us waiting to see what the offense does. We try to be the initiator or the tone-setter when it comes to where you can go or what positions you can be in.”
“There are a lot of different styles [in our league] and so we absolutely have to be flexible in how we guard these guys or else they’ll just pick you apart. Even within the game, they’ll start picking you apart and you’ve got to switch up your style . . We make an adjustment, and now, let’s see if they can make an adjustment and that becomes that cat-and-mouse game that you love.”
“We have this sign in our gym and we call it EGBs, which are energy generating behaviors . . there are 16 or 17 different energy generating behaviors. Number one, it takes their minds off of scoring because none of these things really involve scoring. And, if there’s 16 of them, then at least 13 of them are defensive-oriented.”
“We have an EGB Warrior at the end of every game . . whoever affected the game from an energy generating behavior standpoint is the EGB Warrior. We give them their belt and we celebrate them in social media, in the locker room and all that . . just making them understand that this is a point of emphasis, we value this.”
“Certain guys are physical to get over ball screens or they’re physical to get through screens. And some guys want to lay on those screens like pillows. And so, we’ve got to make sure that everybody is understanding how to get around those screens . . there’s that teaching point there of how to navigate a screen without actually getting hit by it.”
“We talk about roles at the beginning of the year . . but every guy, I don’t care if you’re 5-foot-5 or 7-foot, you have to defend and rebound for our team.”
“You have to have five guys that are committed to getting that rebound. No matter how many guys are coming to the offensive glass, no matter how big they are, if you can outnumber them every single time with five and they have four or they have three or they have two, then you’re probably going to have a chance to get that ball.”
“The number one thing we do is we recruit good players, especially at the guard position . . the guards dominate the game because they have the ball in their hands. They’re making decisions all the time. We made an adjustment after my first year at Radford where we very rarely will play without two point guards on the floor at any given time.”
Mike Jones Breakdown:
Mike Jones Selected Links from the Podcast:
Mike Jones
Randy Phillips
Dennis Felton
Shaka Smart
Billy Donovan
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