The idea -- or maybe more accurately, the hope -- was to take the all-boy bundle of energy and tire him out.
Run him like you would a golden retriever puppy.
And so Ava Mashia would pack everything she could get her hands on -- football, basketball, tennis racket, baseball and bat -- and grab hold of her nephew and head to the park. They would play for hours, feasting on a sports smorgasbord where neither deference for your elders nor charity to a child was allowed.
"I never let him win, not once,'' Mashia said. "He wasn't going to win at anything until he earned it.''
Eventually Terrence Jones earned it, his aunt the first victim in a basketball ladder climb that took no prisoners, only wins, across the state of Oregon.
Now in his second season at Kentucky, Jones is hoping to do the same to the college game.
With yet another loaded freshman class, Kentucky always was going to be good this season. When Jones eschewed the NBA and elected to return for his sophomore season, most everyone agreed the Wildcats could be great. "I told Terrence, you look at those freshmen and you say, 'You guys are really good, but you aren't better than me,''' coach John Calipari said. "He's practicing that way. He's trying to say, 'Look, I went through this. I just went to the Final Four.'''
It is more than Jones' experience that will determine Kentucky's results; it's his maturity.
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