MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- After leading Yale to its second Ivy League title in the previous three seasons, James Jones, The Joel E. Smilow of 1954 Head Coach, was the recipient of the 2019 Ben Jobe Award as the top minority coach in Division I men's basketball presented by CollegeInsider.com at its awards event in Minneapolis.

Jones is the first Ivy League coach to win the award since its inception in 2010.

Jones guided Yale to a remarkable 2018-19 season where the Bulldogs captured both the Ivy League regular season and tournament titles and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the last four years, nearly upsetting No. 3 seed LSU. The Bulldogs finished with a 22-8 overall record, the third time in the last five years they won at least 20 games.

Over the last five years, Yale has won 102 games, the most of any Ivy League school, posted a 52-18 record in Ivy League games, captured three Ivy League championships, won the first NCAA Tournament game in school history, knocking off Baylor in the first round in 2016, and earned victories over schools from the ACC (Miami), Big 12 (Baylor) and Pac 12 (Washington, California).

The Bulldogs have now finished with a winning Ivy League record in each of the last nine seasons and have finished fourth or better in Ivy play in each of the last 19 years.

Jones, the winningest men's basketball coach in school history, completed his 20th season at the helm. During the year, he earned his 300th career coaching victory and tied Fran Dunphy, who coached at Penn, as the second winningest coach in Ivy League history with 310 victories.
 
Harvard’s Tommy Amaker was also a finalist for this year’s Ben Jobe Award, while the pair were also finalists for 2019 Skip Prosser Award.

An icon in the history of basketball at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Ben Jobe is best known as the head coach of the Southern University, a position he held for 12 seasons. His record at Southern was 209-141 and included four NCAA Tournament appearances.