The Mike Jones rebuild at Old Dominion is entering its third year, and the question hanging over Chartway Arena is the same one that has followed every mid-major program in the portal era: how fast can you build something real when the roster turns over every spring? Year two ended 12–21 overall and 7–11 in the Sun Belt — a step back from Jones's first season — but in Norfolk, nobody ever pretended this was going to be quick.
Start with who Jones is, because the hire tells you everything about where this is headed. Named the 14th head coach in program history on March 1, 2024, Jones is an ODU alumnus from the class of 1995 — the second former Monarch player to come home and coach his school, joining Oliver Purnell, whom Jones played for during his first three seasons in Norfolk. Before returning, Jones spent 19 years as the head coach at DeMatha Catholic, one of the most decorated high school programs in America: nine WCAC regular-season titles, eight WCAC tournament crowns, and a pipeline of talent that ran through his program for two decades. He was also a longtime USA Basketball assistant, a co-recipient of the 2019 USA Basketball Developmental Coach of the Year award, and a gold medalist at the 2019 FIBA Americas U16 Championship. Stints as associate head coach at Virginia Tech (with an ACC Tournament title in 2022) and as an assistant at Maryland rounded out a résumé that reads like a builder's handbook. This is a man who knows how to develop players and win games with defense and discipline.
Year one hinted at exactly that. The Monarchs finished 15–20 in 2024–25, but March gave the fan base something to hold onto: as the 10-seed in the Sun Belt tournament, ODU ripped off three straight wins over Louisiana, Texas State, and App State before the run ended, with guard Sean Durugordon earning All-Tournament honors and an All-Sun Belt Third Team nod. That week was the blueprint — Jones's teams defending with purpose, grinding out possessions, and looking like a program with a plan.
Year two was the plan hitting reality. At 12–21, the Monarchs took their lumps, the kind of season that comes when a second-year coach is still installing culture faster than he can install talent. The Sun Belt is no place to rebuild quietly — it is deep, physical, and unforgiving on the road — and ODU spent the winter learning hard lessons. But Jones's whole coaching life has been about the long game: DeMatha didn't become DeMatha in a season. Year three is when a program like this starts to show its shape, and the Norfolk faithful know that patience is the price of a rebuild done right.
The program Jones inherited carries genuine weight. Old Dominion won the Division II national championship in 1975 — the banners from that era still mean something in Norfolk — and the Monarchs have been a Division I March presence for decades: NCAA Tournament appearances in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011, and most recently 2019. The 2010 team under Blaine Taylor, an 11-seed, stunned Notre Dame in the first round before falling to Baylor. The 2019 squad, Jeff Jones's Sun Belt champions, drew Purdue as a 14-seed in the program's last trip to the Dance. Along the way the Monarchs collected the inaugural CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament title in 2009 and the inaugural Vegas 16 championship in 2016 — quirky trophies, sure, but evidence of a program that has always found a way to matter in March, one way or another.
The coaching lineage is part of the identity too. Paul Webb and Tom Young built the Division I foundation. Oliver Purnell — Jones's own coach — and Jeff Capel kept the standard. Blaine Taylor's teams in the late 2000s and early 2010s were the modern high-water mark: rugged, defensive, and built for March, with three NCAA berths in seven seasons and a pair of CAA titles. Jeff Jones then carried the torch through the Conference USA years and into the Sun Belt, winning the program's last league championship in 2019. Now it's Jones's turn, and the symmetry isn't lost on anyone in Norfolk: the DeMatha legend, the ODU alum, the Purnell disciple, back home to restore what he once played for.
Chartway Arena is the other half of the equation. The 8,472-seat building on Hampton Boulevard is one of the Sun Belt's best rooms when it's full — slate blue everywhere, the student section pressed close to the floor, a genuine home-court edge in a league where road wins are currency. For ODU to climb back, Chartway has to become a fortress again. Jones understands that better than anyone; he won too many big games in hostile gyms as a player and coach to take home court for granted.
The move to the Sun Belt in 2022 reset the program's competitive math. The league is a gauntlet of programs that have figured out the portal-era mid-major formula — and the Monarchs' path back runs through it. Rivalries with James Madison, Marshall, and the rest of the eastern wing give the schedule real teeth, and the Sun Belt tournament in March remains what it has always been for ODU: the whole season in one week. The 2025 run as a 10-seed proved Jones's teams can win there. Doing it as a contender is the next step.
What defines Old Dominion basketball is the 1975 banner and the 2019 trip and everything in between — a program with a championship in its bones and a March habit that has survived three conferences. The Monarchs have never been the biggest or the richest; they have been the toughest and the most prepared, and that is exactly the program Mike Jones was built to coach. Year three is where the DeMatha method either takes hold in Norfolk or it doesn't. In the Sun Belt, nobody gives you a fourth year of grace. But nobody who has watched Mike Jones build a program would bet against him getting there.