April 26, 2006

By Patrick Obley

The State

GREENVILLE -- It's not easy to make a name for yourself on the hardscrabble basketball courts of Junior High School No. 231 in the Jamaica section of Queens, N.Y.

If that was Jeff Jackson's goal all those years ago, then his name would have been mud.

"I got my butt whipped," he said with a laugh.

Thus, Jackson went to Cornell to play football, but he injured his shoulder in his first year. A year later, he tried his hand with the Ivy League school's basketball team.

A year after that, he grabbed a whistle and became the school's assistant junior varsity coach.

Today, you can call him the head men's basketball coach at Furman. Jackson will replace Larry Davis, who left Furman earlier this month to be an assistant coach at Cincinnati.

"We want to make sure that this basketball program continues to grow in the right way," Jackson said Monday. "Winning games, winning Southern Conference championships, playing in NCAA Tournaments and having the type of student-athletes that will represent this institution in the correct fashion."

Perhaps Jackson could be called the coach to be named later in the Bobby Johnson "trade." Jackson comes to Furman after seven years as an assistant at Vanderbilt, the school that snatched Johnson from Furman in 2001 to head the Commodores' football program.

It was Johnson who urged Jackson to pursue the Paladins' vacancy.

"He got me excited and intrigued by the position," Jackson said. "You could tell when talking to coach Johnson just how much Furman is still in his heart."

Johnson said his enthusiastic endorsement of Jackson stemmed not only from his ties to Furman, but his understanding of what Jackson will face in building a program that holds athletes to rigorous academic standards.

"He's an excellent recruiter who represented Vanderbilt with total class, and I have no doubt he will do the same for Furman," Johnson said. "He's a perfect fit for Paladin basketball and the Furman community."

While at Vanderbilt, Jackson was asked to recruit players similar to those he will need at Furman. Despite being held to a higher academic standard, Jackson managed to land a top-25 recruiting class for 2005, according to Rivals.com.

Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said it was with mixed emotions that he accepted Jackson's decision to move on.

"This is a tremendous personal loss for me because Jeff Jackson is one of the finest coaches I've been around in college basketball," Stallings said. "That said, this is a fantastic choice for Furman because of Jeff's background and all-around outstanding ability as a leader, recruiter and tactician."

Before Vanderbilt, Jackson spent three years as the head coach at New Hampshire, where he compiled a 21-60 record. He said it was a difficult experience, but one that revealed there was more to coaching than "X's and O's."

"As a young coach, to have an opportunity to run your own program and learn and grow and make mistakes, I think, is going to be a very integral and beneficial part of the success we'll have here at Furman," he said. "I think as coaches, we spend a lot of time trying to learn the science of basketball. ... I think probably the thing I figured out is the importance of how you communicate with people."

One thing Jackson will attempt to communicate to the Paladins is a new style of play, which he calls a "sped-up version" of Princeton's deliberate, half-court offense and suffocating defense.

Furman was 15-13 this past season and lost in the first round of the Southern Conference tournament. Virtually the entire team returns, with Tony Carter, the fourth-leading scorer, being the lone graduating player.