Posted 12:09 am Saturday, July 24, 2010
SMU's Jones Raves About Recruits From East Texas
By SHANE STARK
Staff Writer
SMU coach June Jones considers Texas high school football the nation's best, an opinion he formed as an assistant with the Houston Oilers in the 1980s.
Staff Writer
SMU coach June Jones considers Texas high school football the nation's best, an opinion he formed as an assistant with the Houston Oilers in the 1980s.
Over the last couple of years, Jones has become more familiar with the East Texas brand and has made the region a recruiting priority.
Jones, who has three Tyler-area freshmen signed for the fall, was the keynote speaker at the SMU alumni banquet Friday night at Hollytree Country Club. Prior to the event, Jones spoke about John Tyler's Jeremy Johnson, Troup's Der'rikk Thompson and Mount Enterprise's Kevin Pope.
Johnson was one of the state's most electrifying quarterbacks for John Tyler last season, leading the Lions to a 12-2 record and a berth in the Class 5A Division II state quarterfinals.
Perhaps his most memorable game occurred in the opening round of District 11-5A, when Johnson rushed for 308 yards and five touchdowns and passed for two more in a 59-28 rout of Mesquite Horn.
The performance is still fresh on the mind of Jones, who will play Johnson at receiver but could see the 6-1, 190-pounder taking some snaps at quarterback.
"Jeremy's an exciting kid," Jones said. "He is, I think, a tailor-made slot receiver for what we do. I've had a lot of success with quarterbacks, in particular, converting them into that position. Now with all the different things the offenses do, I think he will have a chance to get in at quarterback during the game for certain packages.
"He looks like he's a 4.55 guy, but in a 25-yard box it looks like he's plays 4.2. He's got good quickness and good athletic ability. Anybody who can run the ball for over 300 yards in a game, it tells you he's a baller. So we're excited about him."
Thompson, meanwhile, missed the 2009 season with a knee injury that's still causing him problems. Though recruiting can be a selfish game, Jones kept his commitment to the Troup speedster who runs a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash.
"Der'rikk is probably one of the better athletes that I think we've recruited," Jones said. "He probably could play receiver, defensive back, he probably could play anything. He can run. He had the knee injury and he's got some issues still with that, so we may push him to January just to give him more time to heal."
Pope is a bulldozing running back who rushed for 1,401 yards and 18 touchdowns in eight games last season, missing the rest with a knee injury. The 5-10, 220-pounder was a force at the 1A level, which Jones said could continue in college.
"When I saw him his junior year, he reminded me of Earl Campbell," Jones said. "He's a very intense, physical runner. He's, I think, one of the best secrets we've uncovered down here. I think that will prove out.
"He comes from obviously a smaller school, but my history of looking at those kids who come from small schools; if they dominate at the smaller schools, usually they'll continue that at a higher level."
Jones, about to enter his third season at SMU, was Hawaii's head coach for the previous nine years and has the most wins in that program's history. He also was the Atlanta Falcons head coach from 1994-96 and the San Diego Chargers' interim head coach in 1998.
After agreeing to a five-year contract with SMU that made him the highest paid coach in Conference USA, Jones led the Mustangs to a 1-11 finish in his first season. But last year, Jones guided SMU to an 8-5 record and the program's first bowl game since 1984.
SMU beat Nevada 45-10 in the Hawaii Bowl, marking the second time in 10 years that one of Jones' teams had the biggest single-season turnaround in the nation. The first came in 1999 when Hawaii went 9-4 and shared the WAC title after going winless the year before -- the biggest turnaround in NCAA history.
Optimistic about the future of SMU football, Jones plans to continue searching East Texas for players.
"We've kind of copied the success TCU has had, the success Houston has had," Jones said. "There's a lot of kids down here that Texas and Oklahoma maybe aren't going to come and project are going to be star players -- they want the star players right now. In our business, you have to do a good job of analyzing who are the potential guys that are going to be able to compete against Texas or Oklahoma."
