Steering the Vikings’ Ship: Northside back in semifinals in first season under Troy Jones
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
Northside High needed to move fast to fill its vacancy for a boys basketball coach when Ross Rix resigned after one season to become an assistant coach at Southeastern Louisiana.
The calendar had turned to August, in which the school’s administration reached out to Naismith Hall of Fame coach Charles Smith of Peabody for insight into Troy Jones, one of his former standout players and two-time state champion.
“I highly recommended him for the job,” said Smith, the nation’s fourth active winningest coach with 1,233 victories and nine state championships. “Our guys are more than just ball players. I call them coaches on the floor. They understand the X’s and O’s of the game. I knew Troy would do well because my guys are team players and know how to get along with other people. I knew he would fit in well at Northside.”
Jones, 34, made up the stagger without an offseason with his new team and continued to sprint forward. He was hired in August and got to know his team for two months before the official start of practice in October. The Vikings faced a challenging schedule that has resulted in the program headed back to the state tournament for the first time in eight years.
The No. 12 Vikings (23-13), the highest remaining seed along with Division I’s Catholic of Baton Rouge, oppose top-seeded Madison Prep (29-2) in Wednesday’s Division II select semifinal at Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles.
The winner faces the Peabody-Washington Marion winner in Saturday’s championship game at 2 o’clock.
“The school hadn’t been able to make it to the quarters,” Jones said of Northside. “The juniors that we have now had their minds set that once they went out there, they weren’t going home. They were going to fight.”
Northside earned the right to host last Friday’s quarterfinal with a 66-65 overtime road win over No. 5 Lake Charles College Prep. The Vikings followed that three days later with a 66-55 triumph last Friday over No. 13 St. Michael the Archangel before a supportive environment that were able to watch the team cut down the nets afterward.
“I noticed the potential of his players,” Smith said, whose Peabody team twice defeated Northside in the regular season. “Being a new coach and trying to put in a new system takes time. He was fortunate for the team to come together in late January, early February, and they’re on a roll right now. He’s got them going in a positive direction.”
Smith recalled Jones being the consummate player who fulfilled the coach’s ideals for Peabody.
“He was an exceptional ball player, an exceptional student,” Smith said. “I always put emphasis on student.”
Peabody won two of its nine state championships during Jones’ career – going a perfect 41-0 in 2010 and 35-1 in 2012.
“He brought a toughness,” Smith said of 6-foot-7, 230-pound Jones. “He guarded the best big man on the other team. He would usually drew their best man guarding him. He would always step up to the challenge. He was very competitive. I talked with the people at Northside, and I told them he was very competitive, very knowledgeable, and he would get along with the kids well.”
Smith thought so much of Jones as a person and player that he recently retired his No. 44 jersey during the regular season. Jones became the 12th member of the fraternity to have his number retired, a group that also includes a pair of former NBA players in Paul Thompson and Markell Brown.
“It’s been a great year,” Jones said.
Jones played a season at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas, before signing with Texas A&M-Kingsville. He enjoyed a productive career, averaging in double figures both seasons and leading the team in rebounding his final season.
He was first in scoring (11.6) and second in rebounds (5.7) in his first season – shooting 51.3% from the floor – and posted a stretch of 10 straight double-figure games and 16 overall.
Jones was second on the team in scoring his second year (12.9) and improved his rebounding to a team-high (8.1). He had 27 games of scoring in double figures with a high of 27 points and 18 rebounds.
Jones parlayed that into a nine-year professional career spent playing in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Panama, Ecuador, and Columbia, the latter where he spent his last five seasons, his last in 2024.
Smith played a big part in Jones getting into the coaching profession, which included venturing to Lafayette Parish, where he worked at Acadian Middle and Lafayette Middle Schools.
“He played a big role in my life,” Jones said of his former coach. “Since I was a kid, I learned a lot from him, and I’m still learning a lot from him as an adult.”
During his time at Lafayette Middle, Jones engineered a complete turnaround with the team he inherited. The year before his arrival, the team had gone 1-16 before launching a complete turnaround with a 20-5 record, division title and runner-up in the city championship.
“I’m a very strict disciplinary type of coach,” Smith said. “I believe my guys should do what’s best for the team, and Troy understood that. It has to be a team effort.”
Northside won 24 games and a playoff game in 2024-25 when the Vikings were left looking for a new coach when Rix joined the collegiate ranks when he was officially named to Southeastern Louisiana’s coaching staff on Aug. 18.
Jones had coached several of Northside’s players on his CENLA Dynasty AAU team and had an established relationship with such players as rising junior guard Jaydon Francis.
Jones wasn’t deterred by the August timetable for his hiring. He acknowledged that the loss of summer development wasn’t optimal, but he allowed the returning players to showcase their skills in pick-up games leading up to the team’s first official practice two weeks into October.
“I felt it was the perfect time to come in,” he said. “We allowed them to actually play. On the defensive end, I wanted them to do what they were supposed to do.
“The guys trusted in me and believed in me,” Jones said. “The juniors now were freshmen when I got to Lafayette. They knew I’d been on these stages before. They believed in me, that I wasn’t going to tell them anything wrong.”
Jones noticed early on the direction his team would take. He wasn’t able to look at any of his players face-to-face because no one came close to reaching his 6-7 stature.
His first team would be built on the strength of its guard play, led by Francis, and a group that would buy into his defense-first mantra.
“We wanted to play fast, try and speed teams up,” Jones said. “I know we were small. I wanted us to fly around and do a lot of extra stuff. Those guys get it. They’ve bought into it. There have been times where I’ve stopped practice and said we were moving too slow.”
The start of Jones’ career couldn’t have gone much better.
Northside won 10 of its first 11 games before a two-point loss to Class 5A Carencro.
Five days later, the Vikings traveled to Alexandria to face Peabody, which handed them a 78-39 defeat.
Smith was uplifting, nonetheless.
“He told me whatever it is I was doing and that I want to do with the team, as long as I believe in it, it doesn’t matter what it is, and to just keep believing in it,” Jones said of Smith. “He said if I believed in it, your players are going to believe in it.”
A second matchup against the Warhorses was more competitive in an 80-56 setback. The Vikings also took part in the Charles Smith Classic on Jan. 31, losing to Tioga, 66-63, a team that went on to win 27 games and was eliminated in the Division I select quarterfinals last week by Alexandria.
That was the same weekend, Peabody paid homage to Jones, who joined some of the school’s greats during a jersey retirement ceremony. During his four-year career, the Warhorses won two state championships and were a state runner-up once.
“Fortunately for Troy, he earned a college degree, and other guys did, which allowed them to do things other than play basketball,” Smith said. “The emphasis with my players is to use basketball, don’t let basketball use you. It’s not just that they were great high school players, but they’ve done great things after high school. “
Jones recognized his team’s fast start before encountering seven of its 13 losses in January.
That spilled into the start of District 4-4A play with a 64-48 home loss to St. Thomas More, which advanced to the Division I select quarterfinals last week against Catholic-Baton Rouge.
“We went back and watched games when we were rolling as a team and doing what we were supposed to do, not getting away from the little things,” Jones said. “We did get back on track.”
Northside bounced back with league wins over Comeaux and Rayne before dropping three straight games to David Thibodeaux, Westgate, and Teurlings Catholic. They finished the regular season with an 82-56 win over North Vermilion for a fifth-place finish and 3-5 mark in the district.
Before the season, Jones wanted to add experience to his roster, which only had one senior in Tashawn Coleman. After the football season, he added seniors Mario Alexander and Tavion Arceneaux, which added a sense of accountability.
“I got the seniors to understand this could be their last dance, that we get this thing together,” Jones said. “I told them they were the leaders on the floor and to get the other guys to buy in and understand. They realized we’ve got something special.”
Northside’s postseason run began with a 66-52 win over Haynes Academy, setting the stage for a second-round trip to Lake Charles to face the fifth-seeded team.
“Normally, they like to talk and are loud,” Jones said. “This time, I didn’t hear a word. They were locked in from the time we got on the bus until we hit the floor. That was the second game this year that we played all four quarters. We normally start slow.”
Northside’s overtime win over Lake Charles College Prep validated the team’s difficult non-district schedule, where they developed a tougher exterior. The Vikings became only the second team this season in 11 games to win on the Trailblazers’ home floor.
They returned home to a festive crowd and threatened to run away from St. Michael, building a 59-42 lead with just under five minutes to play.
Instead, the visitors from Baton Rouge rallied to cut the deficit to 59-53 with 1:38 to go, prompting Jones to take a timeout.
“I asked them what we were doing,” he said. “We had the lead. I told them to play the clock and play basketball. It’s about clock management. We didn’t have to rush things.”
Angelle’s layup helped settle things down for the Vikings, who also got two free throws from Coleman and a closing dunk from Khilon Woods to wrap up the program’s first state tournament trip in eight years.
“It’s all about believing in yourself,” Jones said of his team’s guard play. “I like to tell them I’ve got the best guards in the state, and I believe that. It’s a matter of getting them to believe that as well. They’ve been locked in.”
Francis, who averages a team-high 17 points, scored 13 of his game-high 31 points in the first quarter of Friday’s game, and Woods added 15.
“He deserves to be on a big stage; he’s put in a lot of time,” Jones said of Francis. “I had him on my AAU team, and when I was able to become the head coach of Northside. We had school on a Monday, and he called and told me to set my alarm so we could get in the gym and work. He took a nap and got ready for class. He did the offseason workouts when we ran on the track twice a week. He got up extra shots and then went home. He really wanted it.”
Northside’s perimeter-oriented team includes the play of Woods, a solid mid-range shooter who is also aggressive in transition, along with Angelle, the team’s top defender, and Jayden Jones, another solid shooter that’s played a major role in the team’s success.
All three, coupled with Francis, are juniors.
Northside gets another opportunity to face Madison Prep, which outlasted the Vikings, 65-58, on Jan. 19. The Chargers are sixth all-time with eight state championships, their last coming in 2022.
A semifinal victory would send Northside to its first state championship game since winning the 2006 Class 4A title, where the Vikings could oppose Peabody and another try for Jones against one of the biggest influences in his life.
“Yes, it’s crazy,” Jones said of the possible scenario. “This year has been great for me. Being a first-year head coach and leading these guys to the Top 28.”