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Jones Hired to Texas Tech's Staff. South Oak Cliff head coach Emmett Jones has reportedly been hired by Texas Tech as the director of player personnel for head coach Kliff Kingsbury, via the DMN and WFAA. This is from the DMN article:
South Oak Cliff head football coach Emmett Jones has accepted a position on the Texas Tech football staff as director of player development, he confirmed Friday. He starts officially on Sunday.
Jones was 30-8 as the head coach for SOC and from the WFAA article, here are the players that are part of the 2015 class:
SOC has been a hotbed for college talent. The Class of 2015 which signs Wednesday will include Wisconsin commit running back Jordan Stevenson, defensive back LaDarryl Blair (Boise State), receiver J.F. Thomas (TCU), defensive back Jamile Johnson (Texas), defensive back Prentice McKinney (North Carolina) and will include a half-dozen more including DBs Takedrae Williams, Zxavien Ausborne, DT Jalen Goss and WR Lamont Johnson. SOC already has a talented 2016 class with defensive end Marvin Terry and defensive backs Juice Parker and Hal Vinson.
Jones also worked under Skyline's Reginald Samples, who is now the head coach at DeSoto, the same place where a certain 2016 Texas Tech commit is playing, Tristan Wallace.
The obvious benefit of hiring Jones is to connect with the high school coaches, similarly to what Kingsbury did with associate head and running backs coach Mike Jinks.
One other benefit could have an impact this year. There's a handful of uncommitted 3-star players just in this class alone as well as some committed players that could fill some spots. A couple of those uncommitted players, Takedrae Williams and Zsavier Ausborne are both defensive backs who were originally committed to Wisconsin under Gary Andersen, but when Paul Chryst was hired, they decommitted, or had their offers pulled, or something like that, and apparently Williams would not have qualified at Wisconsin. Having kids qualify was apparently one of the issues that made Andersen move to Oregon State. The other idea is that Dave Aranda is probably the guy in on these players and he's pretty good at his job.
Johnson, McKinney or Blair would be fantastic gets, but they are obviously all committed elsewhere. And Jalen Gross isn't bad either. Only a 2-star, but he was offered by Louisville as well as a couple of other offers.
I love this move and I hope this pays some dividends for the 2015 class.