No 1,000-point scorer in Indiana University basketball history has been through the highs and lows that Verdell Jones has experienced during his four seasons in Bloomington.

From a 6-25 freshman season to a senior campaign in which the Hoosiers own wins over a trio of top five teams and are headed to the NCAA Tournament, Jones has been at the forefront of the rebuilding process for one of the country’s most storied programs.

It’s that unique experience and journey to bring Indiana back that will ultimately place Jones and his fellow seniors into a group that will be remembered for starting the rebuild of Indiana basketball.

A visit that nearly didn’t happen

In the spring of 2008, Jones, who played high school basketball at Central High School in Champaign, Ill., was one of the top unsigned seniors still available to sign a National Letter of Intent. Scholarship offers had come from schools like Kentucky, Minnesota and Tennessee. Jones was beginning to narrow his focus and ultimately decide where to spend the next four years of his life.

He’d been recruited some by Tom Crean and Tim Buckley when both were at Marquette. Jones even took an unofficial visit to the Marquette campus, but said he didn’t like it very much.

When Crean departed for Indiana in early April, the staff scrambled to put together a class to fill the roster for the upcoming season and Buckley put in a call to Jones’ father to gauge his interest in an unofficial visit to Bloomington.

“I was pretty much against it at first,” Jones said. “I was really set on the schools I wanted to choose from.”

But after some convincing from his dad, Jones kept an open mind and hit the road for Bloomington on the weekend of the Little 500.

“I fell in love with it. The tradition and all of that was amazing,” he said. “When I committed, a lot of [Kelvin] Sampson’s players were still here, so I felt we had a good core of players. But after I signed my Letter of Intent, players started to quit and were leaving, but I wanted to keep my commitment because I saw the passion that Coach Crean had.”

A rough adjustment

Top 150 recruits rarely sign with schools in the shape Indiana was in when Jones penned his Letter of Intent.

The Hoosier program was in shambles in the wake of NCAA violations and as the dust settled on IU’s roster for Crean’s first season, it became clear that the outlook on the 2008-2009 season was bleak.

Losing was not something Jones or his teammates, many of whom had successful AAU and high school careers, would deal with easily. As a senior at Champaign Central, Jones led the Maroons to a third-place finish in the Illinois State Tournament.

“It [losing] was something that was totally different. I won my whole life. To do the polar opposite was hard,” Jones recalls. “Some days it was hard to get motivated. Losing, it kills you. It takes away your passion and just drains you a little bit. Mentally and physically.”

His first season at Indiana ended with a 1-17 record in conference play. Jones averaged 11.0 points per game.

While it may be hard to imagine taking many positives from a season where the Hoosiers barely avoided going winless in Big Ten play, Jones says he managed to do just that.

“It was definitely something that, looking back on, I think helped shape me as a man today.”

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