Stat man Jones says KU games a labor of love
Tom Jones’ cell phone buzzed. On the other end was his pregnant wife, Marsha.
“She was in hysterics,” Jones recalled. “She was due, and I thought she was going into labor, but she was actually laughing hysterically.”
Marsha Jones and millions of others watching on television had seen Jones, a member of Kansas University’s men’s basketball stat crew, take the brunt of the blow as KU’s Brett Ballard went soaring into press row.
“I remember it vividly,” Jones said, able to smile about the incident now. “It was the Missouri game in 2002 and four days before our son was born.”
Jones went sprawling backward, but fortunately his head didn’t strike the floor or the bleacher seats. His two stat partners, Mason Logan and Mike “Kato” Koehler, escaped the danger.
“Yeah, Kato dove under the table,” Jones quipped. “Seriously, though, I think we were all lucky.”
Jones is the veteran member of the trio. He started keeping stats at basketball games in 1989 while he was a KU student.
“I walked into the sports-information office and asked for a job,” Jones said. “The first game I worked was that 150-95 game against Kentucky.”
The pace was, of course, frenetic in the highest-scoring game in KU history, and it was doubly tough on Jones because of computer woes.
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“We had two crews — the official one and the back-up,” Jones said. “I was on the back-up crew, and the computer kept crashing so we were really busy.”
Jones graduated in 1991, then stayed in the sports-information office as a graduate assistant for a year before taking a job with an investment company in Kansas City, Mo.
That didn’t stop him from working on the basketball stat crew. He commutes to every game from his home in Overland Park.
“I have the best of both worlds,” Jones said. “I have a real job, and I have a fun job. I have one of the best seats in the house.”
It takes a three-man crew to compile the statistics from a college basketball game. Logan, who works in the sports-information office, mans the computer while Jones and Koehler supply him with the ongoing game information.
If, for example, Keith Langford, who wears No. 5, scores on a jump shot after an assist from Aaron Miles, who wears No. 11, Jones will say “J5, A11.” If Miles steals the ball, Jones will say, “S11,” then “TO” with a number for the jersey of the opposing player who turned the ball over.
“I look at the screen the whole game,” Logan said. “Sometimes, T.J. or Kato will tell me to look up at a fast break, but I have to go home and watch the replay.”
Koehler also is a volunteer. A structural engineer who lives in Kansas City, Mo., Koehler has been a KU stat man for nine years.
“We don’t really even get breaks during timeouts,” Koehler said. “We have to put out up-to-the-minute box scores for radio and TV and for the coaching staff.”
Of the three, Jones is the only one who also keeps stats at KU home football games. In fact, it’s a one-man job.
“Basketball can get hectic at times,” Jones said, “but football is really taxing. For three hours, it’s just you and the computer.”
After 16 years of working KU football and basketball games, Jones’ days providing the numbers may be coming to an end.
“It’s getting harder and harder,” he said. “I’m doing more traveling in my real job. I had to miss two games this year because I was on the road. And I have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old.”