The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

ALTHOUGH the George Washington Colonials women’s junior female basketball player will be the first to tell you that her team performances are the priority, Jonquel Jones just can’t help racking up the individual awards.

Two days after George Washington won the Atlantic 10 regular-season title outright with an 80-45 victory over A-10 foe and Revolutionary rival George Mason on Sunday afternoon at the Charles E. Smith Center, Jones was named the 2015 Atlantic 10 Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, joining head coach Jonathan Tsipis, who was selected as the A-10 Coach of the Year.

The Grand Bahamian is the seventh Colonials’ player ever to be named A-10 Player of the Year and first since Kimberly in 2008. She is also the fifth Colonial to win A-10 Defensive Player of the Year and the first since Beck in 2007. In addition, she is just the fourth player in conference history to be named both Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season since the defensive award was created in 1997; the last player to do so was Temple’s Shey Peddy in 2012.

“It’s a great honour that Jonquel was recognised as Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year because of the impact that she has on both ends of the court.  I’m incredibly proud of her,” coach Tsipis was quoted on the school’s website.

“She’s not somebody that likes to be singled out - she wants to make sure that the team’s success is always ahead of her individually, but I think as several of the coaches in the league said, there’s just nobody else like her and how she’s able to impact the game. She knows there’s a lot of great players in this league, and I think she’s as humbled as I am.”

In an interview with The Tribune, Tsipis said Jones’ performances were just an indication of her work ethic.

“It was really good to finish off 15-0 to win the regular season outright,” he said. “I thought we would have had a chance. There were several good teams like Dayton, the defending champions, who were the coaches’ pick unanimously to win it all. But I think the most important part was that we kept improving tremendously.

“When we came to the Bahamas (Grand Bahama) and played there (in the Thanksgiving Tournament in November) and got the championship title, we looked at it as the first of several that we hoped to get this season. So I was pleased. We beat Dayton, the defending champions, twice and lost the game we played right after them, but responded to win the next five. So I think we could compete for the championship this season and winning it outright exceeded my expectations.”

Tsipis said Jones played a significant role in the Colonials’ impressive first A-10 regular-season title since 2008 and 14th overall. The team (26-3, 15-1 A-10) will be the No. 1 seed in next week’s Atlantic 10 Championship at the Richmond Coliseum and will play the winner of Thursday’s contest between No. 8 VCU and No. 9 Saint Louis in the quarterfinals on Friday at 11am. The game will be televised nationally by American Sports Network.

“I think just every team we play has to make their game plan around how to stop Jonquel and I think that’s just from the offensive end, but she could change the game defensively,” he said. “She leads the league in rebounding. I think she’s the best defender in the league, she finished third in the league in block shots per game and she handles the ball for us and when she rebounds, that puts the teams at a disadvantage.

“She just scores in some many different ways. We’ve seen it in the last six or seven games, when teams tried to double team her, she was just so unselfish and gotten her team-mates to be successful. I think as we get ready for the Conference Tournament on Friday, we will take it one game at a time, but we are looking for her to continue to do the things that she has been doing for us to be successful.”

Six-foot-four Jones was just happy to help the Colonials win the conference.

“It was a season that we worked towards because it was one of our goals,” she told The Tribune. “It felt great to be able to achieve it.”

Jones said her teammates played a vital role in her performance.

“It was a really good season, not just my performance, but the team as a whole,” she pointed out. “Everybody played at a high level and the team was just consistent, so it was a really fun ride and we just want to continue to build on it. We have the most important part of the season coming up, so we have to continue to stay focused.”

She added: “I just want us to finish off strong so that we can continue to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. We just need to continue to play our best basketball at this point in the season.

And she would like to see more Bahamian athletes achieving their goals.

“If me doing well can allow more girls or athletes in the Bahamas to come over here to achieve their goals, then I’m extremely happy with it,” she said. “So I’m grateful for this opportunity and I want to continue to represent the Bahamas and my family in a positive aspect.”

Jones, 21, is just the third Bahamian girls’ basketball player ever to earn a Division I scholarship straight out of high school, following Yolett McPhee-McCuin (Florida Atlantic/Rhode Island) and Waltiea Rolle (North Carolina).