April 26, 2006

By Bart Wright

The Greenville News

It was a cold night in Ithaca, N.Y., in February of 1984 when Jeff Jackson got his first look at the Princeton offense. It was not a pretty sight.

"Oh man," Jackson said Monday when reminded of the experience, "the greatest game I've ever been involved in."

It's good to know the new Furman University basketball coach has an appreciation for sarcasm. Was the Princeton game memorable? You bet. Great game? Not so much.

Cornell won that night, 33-31 after playing a first half that ended, "somewhere in the teens," Jackson said. Advertisement

"When I went to Vanderbilt and coach (Kevin) Stallings started talking about the Princeton-style offense, I had to jump in," Jackson said. "That game stood out to me so much, I told Coach, ëWe'll do whatever you think we should do, but that Princeton stuff isn't going to get the job done here.'"

As it turned out, Vanderbilt did install a modification of the Princeton offense, with an up-tempo pace and a scrambling approach on defense that helped carry the Commodores to one NCAA tournament berth and five NITs in the seven seasons Jackson was an assistant on Stallings' staff in Nashville.

The simple thing would be to say Jackson and Furman are a perfect fit, but that's a judgment for another day, like after the new coach has taken the Paladins to a couple of Southern Conference championships and an NCAA berth or two.

Perfect means the marriage couldn't possibly be better, and if it turns out that way, we'll all be shooting confetti out of pop guns in a parade down Main Street and the next thing we know, Jeff Jackson will be the new coach at Vanderbilt or Stanford.

So, instead of perfect, let's say Furman's decision to turn over its men's basketball program to Jeff Jackson seems like an obvious choice. They go together like books and tuition.

The son of a former mail room employee at the New York Daily News and a homemaker in Queens, N.Y., Jackson grew up with a head for learning and a body inclined for athletics. He played all the usual sports and found himself caught up in the excitement of being a New York Islanders fan, back when they dominated the National Hockey League for a period of years in the late 1970s and early '80s.

An African-American hockey fan?

"Are you kidding me?" Jackson said. "Bobby Bourne, Mike Bossy, Bob Nystrom? Come on, we were the team back in the day."

He rattled off hockey names like some people list the names of the crew they ran with in high school, which tells you this is a guy who lives with passion and knows very well where he comes from.

When he attended Cornell and had his shoulders banged up playing football in his sophomore season, he turned to basketball and then became an assistant coach and junior varsity coach for the Big Red, which is, in terms of athletics, a hockey school.

Had he not grown up with an appreciation for hockey, that might have been an issue, but it didn't become one until later when he accepted his first head coaching position at New Hampshire, another hockey school.

Unfortunately, he was the basketball coach and his 21-60 record in three seasons is remembered now for the way in which it helped inform him on the big world that's out there.

"It was actually a great experience," he said, "in between those times we had to wait for the hockey team to finish so we could practice."

It was at Stanford and Vanderbilt that Jackson figured out his path would take him to those places where academics washed over and through the athletic programs. You find those coaches who don't fit in places with rigorous academic standards and you also find those who don't feel comfortable anywhere else.

Jackson is in the latter group, and he has a reputation for knowing talent when he sees it.

He met his future wife, Carolyn, on the first day of classes in their freshman year at Cornell.

"It was on the steps of the Student Union building," said Carolyn, a Spanish major who was born in Barbados and raised in New York, "my girlfriend introduced us. She was the bridesmaid at our wedding."

When she was asked if she had been smitten from the moment she met him, Carolyn smiled, then winked.

"No," she said, "but he was."

She seemed an obvious choice for him, just as he does for Furman.