Congratulations. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Looking forward to talking to you. Thanks for Thanks for spending a couple minutes with Oh, no. Thank you. It'll be good stuff, man. We'll blast it out there and try to get everybody fired up in the town and say Thanks for all you do. Yeah, I got a lot of help. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Bad or bad. This is the fun stuff. I don't I can't imagine how you feel. No, it's a privilege. I mean, you know, I know you I know you were on the '06 and '07 championship in Florida. Yeah. And now here you are going going to that big dance, man. It's incredible. That's good. Would you like to say something to our guys? If you want me to, but yeah. I'll be short and sweet. Yeah. This is our our sheriff here in town. Okay. Mike Mike Jeff Wood and we're happy to have him. He's He's been in the police officer for over 30 some years. And so, what he does for our community, I can't even begin to tell you how grateful we are. How he serves here and protects us and keeps us and you know, there's a lot of a lot of things can happen in in this Volusia County. We got a great area here, but also that brings a lot of tourism and a lot of other stuff we talk about all the time. But this guy 24/7's got his people out here putting their life on the line every day. Okay? Every day. All right, to serve us. So, we appreciate this. Give him a round of applause for the guys for Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. First, I want to congratulate you. I mean, I know you guys are in the gym, you're working your ass off, but the people outside of the gym recognize everything that you're doing. This is one hell of an accomplishment. So, on behalf of the sheriff's office, we just want to tell you how proud you are and what you mean not only to our community but what you mean to this university. And man, I'm looking forward to where you guys get seated and watching you guys play and watching you show what the land Florida and Volusia County's all about on a national stage. And have a lot of fun and God bless you. Keep it up Keep it up, man. Keep going. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Let's bring it in. Here we go. Good job, guys. Say bye. All heads on three. 1 2 3. All Welcome to another edition of Chit Chat and man what an exciting show we're going to have here. We are here with the Stetson Hatters head coach, Donnie Jones. And I'll tell you, you talk about basketball pedigree, the man played at Pikesville, Kentucky as a player, was an assistant coach there, assistant coach at Marshall, was an assistant coach at the University of Florida and they won two national championships in '06 and '07, head coach at UCF, head coach at Marshall and since 2019 he has been here with Stetson and man he has led them to their first ever NCAA tournament. Coach, welcome. Oh, thanks Blake. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for coming. I cannot imagine the feeling. First time ever, great group of young men behind me. What do you What do you What are you looking for? Yeah, you know what? It's exciting, you know, especially in this great community here in DeLand. So many great people like yourself that that that that loves this community and now have this kind of excitement to be in March Madness, one of the biggest tournaments in the world for basketball. So it's been incredible buzz around campus for our students and and our athletes. I mean, take us through your season. 22 and 12 in the regular season, 11 and 5 in the conference and then last Sunday all hell broke loose. Yeah, it's incredible. You know, we we started out the season with some some big wins. You know, had a good win at UCF. We beat a good Charlotte team here, played a very tough schedule, 10 games on the road of our first 15. Really I think grew this team, seasoned them, gave them some confidence playing against high level competition. Came into our conference play, you know, we're back and forth pretty much up there one or two the whole time, end up finishing second by one game and I really thought our team took another step at the end of the season. Just seeing us grow in the confidence. And then obviously we were fortunate to get the first two games at home and we had upsets with Eastern Kentucky get beat, gave us the championship game in our building and and obviously this place is the probably the first time it's been packed since the early years when it opened. And Jalen went crazy in that game. Where he scored what? 40 42? 43 points. 40 43 points, 91% free throw shooter. I know you were really proud of him. Got to meet him. Sure. So, tell us about your roster and what you Yeah. Yeah. get some of these young men from? Yeah, we got some kids from Indiana, as we mentioned. Jalen Blackmon, we'll start with him. Uh also had 34 points in the second half of the championship game. Set a A-Sun record, most points scored in the championship. Um Jalen was newcomer of the year last year, first team all-conference back-to-back. Uh he's 12 points short of breaking the single season record scoring here at Stetson. But, uh you know, Jalen is a junior. Um terrific player, led the A-Sun in scoring. Stephan Swenson, uh our point guard, hit the big shot against Jacksonville. Uh big three to win the game to send us into the championship. Uh he's from Belgium. Uh he's a senior. All-time leading assist guy here at Stetson now. Uh other guards, uh Al-Amir Dawes Obi. We call him Amir. 6'5 senior. Uh he's from up here in Gainesville, Florida. Uh terrific player as well. Uh then at the small forward spot, we play a freshman. Uh he's from St. Pete. And uh Tristan Gross is his name. He's really talented kid. And then the center spot, Aubin Gateretse. Uh he's from uh Belgium as well, 6'11. And then, you know, those are probably the main guys for us. We got Trey Thompson, a transfer from Minnesota that's come in, 7-foot. Uh he's come from the Big Ten. Uh he came in this year, gave us a lot of great minutes. But, uh we we've had some great kids. Um you know, we lost Josh Smith, our all-conference center, uh with an ACL three weeks left in the season. Right. Which took a took us back for a minute, and we regrouped it, and we adjusted, and these kids have uh really rallied around them. It's always next man up, and that that comes from the coaches. It flows down, next man up. And I I I will tell you, just meeting these young men, uh not only incredible athletes, but really good men when you get to talk with them, and uh you're blessed to have that in your organization. I know one of the things we talked about before we went on on on live here was the pool. How does that affect you in your day-to-day dealings? Yeah, yeah, it's tough, you know, it's here. Uh so, you know, it really started in the power five, you know, where there's a lot of money, and now it's starting to filter down into this level. And so, we've lost several kids over the last couple years that's moved up to the power five in different places. So, uh you know, but we just embrace it. You know, these kids come here, and uh they're they're going to come and go. They're going to have different opportunities. We just got to continue to find that happy medium uh to where we got kids developed and grow, almost like a farm system sometimes with kids, you know, being able to take it out and step and go. Our job is to grow people, grow men, uh help them be better citizens in the community, uh help them get a degree if we can keep them here. Hopefully, these seniors will graduate with their degree That is fantastic. this year, which is outstanding. And uh so, they'll have great opportunities, uh opportunity to come back or other opportunities. Well, you talked about that a little bit. I touched on that COVID rule that came into place. Some of these Well, these men can come back under the COVID rule, but you're in the portal. Yeah, yeah, the portal's always going to be a thing. When you have success, uh people come. And so, people love winners in this world. So, I think uh but you know, these guys have a year to come back, and COVID gave a year. This is the last group to be able to get that extra year. Uh when those guys come in freshman, it was very difficult that COVID season. So, personal question. You're a basketball lifer, clearly. Okay. You love your You love your men. You love basketball. Sure. When that clock hits zero on Sunday, and you knew you were big dance bound, how how did that feel on your own program? You know what? It was just just like it stopped. You know, and everything went slow motion. And I was thinking, who do I hug first? All right, I'm looking around, and they're all the four jumping up. So, I was just trying to find my wife. And then, but all these students were running, and I thought, I'm going to get knocked out here by some of these students. I won't make SportsCenter getting ran over. So, I held my wife, obviously, and got to embrace with her because uh she's been the star behind this whole thing with the sacrifice of lives making this program. Probably a good move. Seek and ask your wife. Absolutely a good move to do that. Absolutely. Speaking of ESPN, I was messing around on the computer the other day and you know, everybody is speculating where you're going to end up. And I saw where Joe Lunardi had you guys seated at 16 against UConn. I know you don't have a crystal ball. Sunday's your watch party. What what are you thinking? Yeah, you know, we're it's definitely going to be one of those. You know, there's still a chance you could go to Dayton and be in the play-in game. There's still a lot of things being played out here in the next few days. Hopefully there's some upsets of some of those other teams go to Dayton and play the play-in game. But if that's what we have to do, I coached at Dayton 5 years ago. I have a lot of friends there. Yeah, as it turns out, yes. Yeah, so we'll be happy to go there, but we're just happy to be in it and you're going to have to play your way. You know, this is my 15th NCAA tournament as a coach. And so here it's special as anywhere I've ever been. But we did it all the way to Monday night, you know, six in a row to play in the championship and they were all hard. So every one of those are hard, no matter who you play. I think the one thing we talked about it when you let me we were so gracious enough to let me speak to the young man was that you really have anything to lose. You guys played so hard to get here. How often in life do you know, I get to go on a court play a game that I love and and say, I get to play as hard as I can and let it all hang out. And who knows, maybe 1989 repeats its repeats itself in 2024 if you get that number one seed UConn or you get Tennessee or wherever you're going to get. I think you guys are in a great spot. Absolutely. And and I think that's what the danger is for whoever you're going up against. Yep. Absolutely. So your kids, you want to go play in the conference, you want to play in the tournament. You want to enjoy the moment, take it in. Sometimes we get in stuff when we're in it, but we don't take a break and go, "Wow, let's enjoy this moment." You want to stop time sometimes, right? And so, you know, they got a chance to do that. This is this will be their story for the rest of their life. Absolutely. They'll they'll never forget this. And you could see it in their eyes. You could see the enthusiasm when I came in the gym. When you got to shake their hands and and I the one message I had for them was I remember back in 1989, you know, number 16 Princeton and coach Pete Carril going up against an overall number one seed in Georgetown and Hoyas and John Thompson and they lost by one point. And then I think it was like nine years later, seven years later they beat UCLA. Uh as a 16 seed. So I mean you guys going in there, you got history on your side and Absolutely. I know we're all rooting for you. Yeah, well thank you. That's a that's a great story. It's a great message to share. Uh those guys understand there will be a Cinderella. Somebody will be here this year. And and we're hoping it's you guys. We are. You've earned it. Uh Sunday night, tune in to ESPN. You're going to get to absolutely see coach and the Stetson Hatters as they get their their assignment for where they head for March Madness. Coach, congratulations. Absolute pleasure. Appreciate you having us. It's a great program. Yeah, thank you. Great to have you. So thanks for tuning in. Sunday, watch the selection show and let's root Stetson on the victory in round one.