Old Dominion (0-1) vs No. 10 Arizona (1-0) — McKale Center — 2 p.m. Saturday — ESPN+ — 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

PROBABLE STARTERS

OLD DOMINION

G Jaden Johnson (6-2 freshman)

G Robert Davis Jr. (6-6 soph.)

F R.J. Blakney (6-6 senior)

F Sean Durugordon (6-6 junior)

C Caelum Swanton-Rodger (7-0 junior)

ARIZONA

G Jaden Bradley (6-3 junior)

G Caleb Love (6-4 fifth-year)

F KJ Lewis (6-4 soph.)

F Trey Townsend (6-6 fifth-year)

C Tobe Awaka (6-8 junior)

How they match up

The series: Arizona beat the Monarchs 88-74 the only time they have played before, on Dec. 22, 1975, at McKale Center.

Game agreement: Old Dominion is appearing at McKale as part of a single-game contract for an undisclosed fee. (A public records request to Arizona for the game contract in September has not yet been fulfilled).

Old Dominion overview: A former star player at Old Dominion, new head coach Mike Jones returned to take over the program after longtime coach Jeff Jones was forced to retire because of health issues. It’s the first head coaching job for Mike Jones (no relation), who spent 19 seasons running Washington, D.C. prep power DeMatha before serving as associate head coach at Virginia Tech in 2021-22 and 2022-23, then moving to Maryland as an assistant last season.

Picked to finish eighth out of 14 teams in the Sun Belt Conference, the Monarchs returned just three scholarship players from a team that went 7-25 last season, adding 13 newcomers that includes eight freshmen and five transfers.

They started the season on a rough note, erasing a 12-point deficit in the second half on their home court before Buffalo’s Tyson Dunn hit a 3-pointer with 1.3 seconds left that gave the Bulls an 83-82 win. UMass transfer Robert Davis Jr. led ODU by hitting 8 of 13 3-pointers, posting 25 points and 10 assists. ODU shot 42.9% from the field and scored 23 second-chance points off 22 offensive rebounds but allowed the Bulls to shoot 56.1% from the field and make 10 of 22 3s.

The Monarchs go with freshman Jaden Johnson at point guard, but have veteran transfers elsewhere in their starting lineup. Combo forward Sean Durogorder is at his fourth college in four years, starting at Missouri in 2021-22, spending his sophomore season at Austin Peay and averaging 18.0 points and 7.3 rebounds for Siena last season. Davis was a key reserve as a freshman at UMass last season, averaging 4.1 points and 1.6 rebounds. Wing Stephaun Walker spent the past two seasons at Robert Morris, averaging 9.9 points and 6.2 rebounds last season. Up front, the Monarchs have a physical 7-footer in Caelum Swanton-Rodger, who followed Jones over from Maryland after playing sparingly for the Terps as a freshman last season.

Key players

OLD DOMINION — Robert Davis Jr.

A prolific high school scorer at Southern California Academy, Davis averaged 13.7 minutes and only 4.1 points off the bench for UMass last season while shooting 31.3% from 3-point range. Then he became Jones’ first commit at Old Dominion, and debuted with a monster game from the perimeter against Buffalo.

ARIZONA — Anthony Dell’Orso

The Aussie wing hit 8 of 16 3-pointers between the Red-Blue scrimmage and UA’s two exhibitions but opened the regular season on a shaky note, hitting just 1 of 5 from 3-point range and missing all four other field goals he took. The Wildcats are counting on the Campbell transfer for high-level shooting off the bench.

SIDELINES

Homecoming

Because he won over 600 games between DeMatha High School and USA Basketball junior teams, Mike Jones could have stayed put basically forever.

It was only during the COVID year of 2020-21 that the longstanding tug of coaching at Old Dominion, where he was a standout player in the 1990s, nudged Jones to take a job as an associate head coach at Virginia Tech under Mike Young in 2021-22.

“We had a really good team, a really good team probably for the next three or four years, but we were only allowed to play 11 games during the COVID season, and we didn’t know what the next season was going to be like,” Jones said. “I just figured, ‘I’ve done a lot here at DeMatha, and I don’t know what the future is going to be. So if I’m ever going to do it, I probably need to do it now.’

“Coach Young knew that I wanted to be the head coach here at ODU, so that was kind of his sell to me, that if I did take him up on his offer, that he would help me get here.”

Jones spent two seasons under Young, then went back to the D.C. area last season as an assistant at Maryland. Last spring, he took the head coaching job at ODU, where he played four seasons in the early 1990s. Jones was a two-year starter who scored 19 points in ODU’s triple-overtime upset over third-seeded Virginia in the 1995 NCAA Tournament.

“I thought I’d be at DeMatha for my career,” Jones said, “but I did know that if I ever did come to the college side, that I wanted to be the coach here, at a place that had such an impact on me.”

No eye-rolls, please

While NIL and the transfer portal have dramatically changed recruiting in the years since Jones jumped into the college ranks, he said one important lesson he picked up while advising his DeMatha players about their recruitment still holds: Building a true connection with players.

“I tell kids all the time, I don’t want you to ever look down at your phone and you see, ‘Coach Mike Jones, ODU’ and you’re kind of like ‘Oh, I gotta talk to this guy,’” Jones said. “In my years at DeMatha, I saw that look on my players’ faces all the time. So I’ve tried to be as genuine as possible and to connect with them on more than just basketball when recruiting a young man and his family.”

Jones mentored nine players at DeMatha who were top college targets that eventually went to the NBA, including guard Markelle Fultz, who chose to play a year at Washington over Arizona and Louisville before becoming the No. 1 NBA Draft pick in 2017.

Merry Monarchs

Established in 1930 as the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary, Old Dominion really isn’t that old. And after its nickname changed from Braves to Monarchs when the school became the independent Old Dominion College in 1962, the mascot was a lion.

Not a king, and not a butterfly, either. So what gives?

According to David Asbury of The Monarchists, a fan-run athletic support group, it has something to do with King Charles II, who “kind of looks like a lion if you squint really hard.”

Nicknamed the “Merry Monarch,” Charles II dubbed Virginia the “Old Dominion” for its loyalty in the English Civil War of the mid-17th century (“old” in this case referring to “favorite” or “cherished”). Lions, meanwhile, were a part of Charles II’s heraldry, as they are today with King Charles III.

Today, Old Dominion’s athletic facilities pay homage to this history — and confusion — with a football stadium nicknamed the “Castle” but also a soccer stadium known as the “Den.”

“The mascot and the nickname are flexible and fun either way,” Asbury wrote. “This is all supposed to be fun and not taken very seriously.”

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Numbers game

1: Ranking of Old Dominion’s Chartway Arena among venues under a 10,000-seat capacity on a U.S. college campus, according to Pollstar, a music industry trade publication.

25: Percent of ODU students with military ties. Active duty military can take courses at a 38% discount to in-state tuition costs.

217: Dollars for a season ticket to attend all of Old Dominion’s 16 home games at the 8,600-seat Chartway Arena in Norfolk.

<&rdpEm>— Bruce Pascoe</&rdpEm>

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Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at bpascoe@tucson.com. On X(Twitter): @brucepascoe