University of Toledo men's basketball coach Gene Cross remembers Jarrod Jones well.
Cross spent the last two seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Notre Dame where he was recruiting coordinator, and said the Irish had some interest in the 6-foot-9-inch Jones, who is a 2008 graduate of Michigan City High School about 30 miles from the Notre Dame campus.
Cross said he now wishes the Irish would've signed Jones instead of Ball State after he had 13 points and a career-high 15 rebounds against Toledo in the Cardinals' 66-53 win against the Rockets on Sunday.
"I anticipated that [Ball State] would be physical, I thought that we would have an answer for [Jones], but obviously we didn't," Cross said. "And once they saw that we didn't have an answer, they kept going to it and kept going to it and we didn't have an answer."
Jones, alongside sophomore forward Malik Perry, combined for 26 points and 22 rebounds in the winning effort. Perry had 13 points and seven rebounds against Toledo.
For the game, Ball State (9-8, 4-1 Mid-American Conference) had 28 points in the paint compared to the Rockets' 24.
"Pretty soon, I'm going to have to put one of my assistants down there to help in the interior," Cross said.
Ball State coach Billy Taylor said having success in the paint led to a good inside-outside balance. The Cardinals shot 6-of-14 (42.9 percent) from behind the 3-point line against Toledo (4-15, 2-3 MAC), which is almost 13 percent better than the Cardinals' 30.8 percent 3-point shooting for the season.
"We were able to attack inside, got some opportunities for Jarrod [and] for Malik where they were able to finish at the front of the rim, and then that freed up some open jump shots for some of our shooters," Taylor said. "We just did a nice job of having a good balance of inside-out game, and it's just nice to see that kind of productivity and execution of our offense."
Jones became the first Ball State player to get the 15 rebound in a game since senior forward Anthony Newell had 15 boards against the University at Buffalo on Feb. 13.
Toledo sophomore forward Justin Anyijong, who had a game-high 19 points and added nine rebounds on Sunday, battled down low for position with Jones for most of the game.
"Our coaches told us that we're going to have to sag in on Jones," Anyijong said. "He came out here [Sunday] and ... he just played tough [Sunday]. We had no answer for him."
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