One year ago, Lucky Jones had the very unlucky fortune to be playing professional basketball in Ukraine, of all places, as the country was being invaded by Russia.
Ten years ago, Lucky had the great fortune to be part of the biggest win in Robert Morris basketball history -- a stunning upset over Kentucky in the NIT.
Jones tells equally fantastic stories about both of those memorable events during this week's new episode of the Memory Lane podcast. You can check out the entire podcast below, with the first 20 minutes devoted to the elation of the NIT victory, then the final 10 minutes to the despair of having to flee a country during war.
"Man, I'm fortunate," he said. "I guess that's why they call me Lucky, huh?"
Jones and a number of former Colonials players will be back in Moon Township this evening, as Robert Morris celebrates the 10-year reunion of the win over Kentucky during tonight's game against Milwaukee at UPMC Events Center. Tipoff is 7 p.m.
"That day was fabulous," Jones said of the stunning 59-57 NIT victory on March 19, 2013. "That event was probably the most historic day Robert Morris has ever done."
The Colonials have appeared in eight NCAA Tournaments and have long been a strong mid-major program with plenty of high points. But the win over Kentucky was special -- even compared to an NCAA tourney appearance -- for several reasons.
First and foremost, the game was at home in front of a jam-packed crowd at the Sewall Center, and the Colonials faithful had the thrill of welcoming big, bad Kentucky on national TV. That sort of thing just doesn't happen in college basketball -- ever -- to the overwhelming majority of mid-majors.
Kentucky was the defending national champion, and though it had endured a tough season and missed the NCAA Tournament in 2013, let's be honest, it was still Kentucky.
John Calipari was the coach, he had some NBA players on the roster (Willie Cauley-Stein, Archie Goodwin, Alex Poythress) and the backing of Big Blue Nation.
None of that mattered on this night.
As you can see in the video above, Robert Morris' Mike McFadden went to the line after getting fouled with 8.7 seconds left in a tie game, and he hit two free throws for a 59-57 lead.
Those are probably the two most clutch free throws in Colonials history.
Getty
Mike McFadden celebrates after getting fouled in the final seconds, then he sank two free throws to win it for Robert Morris.
Kentucky's Kyle Wiltjer, who later transferred and became a star at Gonzaga before also playing briefly in the NBA, missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Robert Morris had won. And the crowd went nuts.
Hours earlier, before the game had even started, Jones and his Robert Morris teammates knew they could pull off the win. They saw the giant crowd turn out and how excited everyone was, and it fueled the entire team to come out and play well.
"The atmosphere was amazing," Jones said.
That Kentucky team also featured future NBA player Nerlens Noel, who had suffered a knee injury during the season that derailed the Wildcats' hopes. Kentucky undoubtedly was disappointed to be going to the NIT with all the talent it had on the roster, and surely the Wildcats were probably overlooking Robert Morris to a degree heading into the game.
Calipari is a native of Moon Township, and with Kentucky's Rupp Arena unavailable to host an NIT game, he agreed to play the contest at the Sewall Center.
For the Colonials, this was their chance. Their pinnacle. Their opportunity to make history.
And they did.
"Once we found out that we were playing them, literally my phone started buzzing," Jones recalled. "I was sitting at home and watching ESPN. It was like, No. 1 (seed) Kentucky will be playing at Robert Morris. I was like, 'No way!' Calipari is not coming to Moon Township. They were telling us that he's from Moon, he went to Moon High School, and I was just like, Wow!"
Robert Morris Athletics
Lucky Jones celebrates with fans after the win, while blue-clad Kentucky fans in the background express their disappointment.
The following season, Jones and Robert Morris made it back to the NIT and pulled off another upset, this time against St. John's.
The next season, when Jones was a senior, the Colonials made it to the NCAA Tournament and beat North Florida in a First Four game before falling to Duke in the next round.
Jones finished his career as the fourth-leading scorer in Robert Morris history with 1,632 points.
Clearly, Lucky Jones enjoyed a lot of luck on the basketball court. And it didn't end in college, either, as he went on to play professionally in numerous leagues overseas from 2015-22.
As fate would have it, he was playing for a team in Ternopil in the Ukrainian Superleague a year ago, before everything turned upside down in that country.
Once Russia invaded, many people across the country tried to flee Ukraine. As an American basketball player, Jones was advised to leave the country, but doing so was not quite so easy.
He explains a lot of the harrowing details in the podcast below, including this excerpt:
"I was in a minivan with five other foreigners, with approximately about eight bags and one driver, with about a million cars in front of us not knowing if we're going to get back to America. ... Even to think about this and talk about this, it hurts.
"There are other people over there dying and losing their lives," he continued. "They're fighting for their country hard. And some of my teammates' friends and family passed away, too, bombs and explosives and all types of gunfire. You don't really want nobody to experience that.
"But for me and my family to know that we didn't know what was going to go down and what was going to happen, being outside for 10, 11, 12 hours in the freezing cold, you don't even want your worst enemy to experience that. It's freezing out there. Freezing cold. ... I just wanted to get back to America."
It's hard for him to talk about, but Jones was scared for his life, scared he may not see his wife and four children again. CNN wrote a terrific story about him last March, with his wife, Marissa, sharing this:
“He was definitely panicked and scared. He said things like, ‘Tell my kids I love them,’ ‘Send me pictures of my kids, I want to see my kids,’ and ‘Make sure they know I love them.’”
When asked about how scared he was at the time, Jones said:
"I mean, even right now, like I'm tearing up because, yeah, I was crying in the car. I'm like, I spent all my life playing basketball to work so hard to just be like, dang, basketball really put me into this type of situation."
For the entire story about Jones' ordeal in Ukraine and the happier memories of Robert Morris' NIT victory over Kentucky, check out the entire Memory Lane podcast below.
