Jerry Jones, longtime Louisville basketball assistant coach under Denny Crum, dies

Former Louisville men's basketball assistant coach Jerry Jones, a longtime member of the late Hall of Famer Denny Crum's staff, has died. He was 89.

U of L announced Jones' death Monday afternoon in a statement.

Jones' oldest daughter, Sherry, said in a Nov. 19 post to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that her father had entered hospice care. During his final weeks, more than a dozen former players and colleagues stopped by for visits, including second-year U of L head coach Kenny Payne.

"Prayers to the family of Coach Jones," Payne wrote on X. "He meant so much to so many players who wore the jersey. I was blessed to have you coach me and I will be forever grateful for you and your family."

"My first impression (of him) was the same as the last impression: enthusiastic, positive, upbeat, very delightful to be around," former Louisville athletics director Bill Olsen, who coached with Jones on Crum's staff, told The Courier Journal on Monday.

"Coach Jones was extraordinary, because he made others better," added Bellarmine head coach Scott Davenport, who walked onto Jones' JV team at Louisville in 1975, then joined him on the Cardinals' bench as a colleague in the late 1990s.

"It wasn't just basketball players," he added. "It was campers, other coaches, people throughout the community, his golfing friends. Everywhere he went, he made others better. He was extraordinary."

A Merrillville, Indiana, native, Jones served on Crum's staff from 1973-2001, the first 24 years as an assistant coach and the last five as a university relations assistant. Crum lured Jones away from Pepperdine, where he was an assistant under Gary Colson.

Their friendship began in 1967, when Crum, as an assistant on John Wooden's staff at UCLA, was the featured speaker at a coaching clinic Jones put together.

"He's just one of those guys who was meant to be a coach," Crum told The Courier Journal in 2011, for a story about Jones coming out of retirement to impart the high-post offense to the Jeffersonville High School girls basketball team. "He's just good at it.

"He understands the game; and he's been involved with it all his life. He has a great rapport with the kids. He's good around people. You knew he would do a great job."

Before joining Pepperdine's staff, Jones was the head coach at Florida Military College and Tift County High School in Georgia. And while colleagues such as Dana Kirk and Wade Houston used their time at Louisville as a springboard to leading their own Division I programs, Jones was more than content with being Crum's right-hand man.

The Waves tried to make Jones their head coach several times after he left for Louisville, Davenport confirmed with The Courier Journal on Monday. He always turned them down.

And that's because loyalty, Davenport said, "was No. 1" in Jones and Crum's value system.

Together, they directed the Cards to hundreds of wins, national championships in 1980 and 1986 and five trips to the Final Four. Crum also named Jones to his staff for the 1987 USA Pan American Games.

"He was one of the great, best hires that Denny, probably, ever made in his coaching career," Olsen said.

"There's no person I would rather be in a foxhole with than him," added Lancaster Gordon, one of 13 Louisville players to be selected in the first round of the NBA draft between 1975-96. "You want to have a tactician, you want to have somebody who can get it done and you want to have somebody who is adaptable. He was all of those things."

During a eulogy he gave at Crum's funeral last May, Jones called teaming up with him "the best move I ever made in my life.

"The thing I remember most about him, and the thing that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life, is that he was an individual who treated you like you were an equal," he told the crowd at Southeast Christian Church. "He wasn't Denny Crum up here and you were Jerry Jones down here; and that was the same with (everyone)."

Jones was inducted into the U of L Athletics Hall of Fame in 1998. He played collegiately for three seasons at Lipscomb before transferring to, and graduating from, Valparaiso — then earned a master's degree from Georgia during the late 1960s.

He was preceded in death by his wife of 54 years, Beverly, whom players during the Crum era referred to as "Mama Jones," and is survived by three daughters: Nancy, Kathy and Sherry.

Funeral arrangements have not been finalized.

Reach Louisville men's basketball reporter Brooks Holton at bholton@gannett.com and follow him on X at @brooksHolton.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Longtime Louisville basketball assistant coach Jerry Jones dies