Jones Runs ‘Em Ragged On Basketball Floor, Too

Fans at North Carolina women’s basketball games have gotten used to seeing an occasional blur out on the floor. They know now that their eyes aren’t going bad.

It’s only Marion Jones, streaking toward the basket after yet another steal or leading yet another fast break.

There may be players as quick or quicker with their first step, but on an all-out sprint down the court, it’s hard to imagine that anyone in sneakers is faster than Jones, the track star who plays point guard for the ninth-ranked Tar Heels.

Or is she the point guard who’s also a track star? She’s so good in both sports, it’s hard to say.

“Just call her Rocket,” Clemson coach Jim Davis said after Jones hit the winning basket against his team in mid-January.

That’s not her nickname, but it certainly would fit this confident, talkative sophomore who leads her team in steals and assists and is second in scoring.

So would “Flash,” the headline that ran on a national magazine story on Jones.

“Nobody has actually called me that,” she said, showing her everpresent smile. “But they had my address down at the bottom and I got about a million letters from kids that said `Flash’ starting the letters. They didn’t even know my name. It was just `Flash.’ “

And the letters are still coming.

“I have a cover letter and send them posters and pictures,” she said. “I can’t answer all the letters. There’s always that special letter that comes to you from a little kid who says something that really touches you and you want to write them back. But you can’t answer everything.”

The attention comes from her ability to excel in two sports whose seasons overlap. There were many who doubted she could, mostly track people, but she has shown they were wrong.

Last year, Jones won Atlantic Coast Conference championships in three track events and was an AllAmerican in four. That came after a basketball season in which she averaged 14.1 points, shot 53 percent and set an ACC freshman record with 111 steals as North Carolina won the NCAA championship.

This season, she has increased her scoring to 16.9 points a game, she’s still making better than half her shots (51 percent) and she already has more assists than she did all of last season.

“I’m happy,” Jones said. “But I was not going out to prove them wrong. The world of track is completely different from anything you’ve ever known. They’re very possessive. They want their track athletes to stay in the realm of their sport. And so when they see anybody go astray, as I did, they get unhappy.

“But it kind of made me happy this summer when I looked back. I knew I had made the right decision.”

The knock on Jones in basketball was that she was actually too fast. She had set the national high school record for 200 meters, but a basketball court is only 94 feet long. A player, especially fast one, runs out of room quickly.

“That’s what the coaches in California told me,” North Carolina coach Sylvia Hatchell said. “They told me the only problem with Marion Jones was that she’d be here and the ball would be behind her.

“So we knew right away she was going to have to work on her ballhandling. But she made that commitment and came in before practice and after practice to work on it and made herself a good ballhandler.”

Eventually, Jones will have to decide between the two sports, and it looks like that will be next season, when she’s expected to skip basketball for a year to concentrate on track in hopes of qualifying for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

A recent trip whetted her appetite for that competition.

“We were down in Atlanta to play Georgia Tech and I got a chance to go see how the work was going on the new stadium,” Jones said. “I kind of got chills in my spine when I saw it.

“When I got back to the hotel, I called my mom and just said, `Start your tickets. Get ready.’ “

Jones could have gone to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona as an alternate in the 400-meter relay. Had she gone to Spain, she would have returned with a gold medal because the U.S. team won. But she has no regrets about staying home.