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LUCAS AT LARGE M I K E LUCA S • UWB A DGERS.C OM Jones proves it's never too late to return D anny Jones entered Wisconsin with the title of student-athlete. Only half of that was true. He was a basketball player. A good one, good enough to be inducted into the UW Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1990, Jones left Madison as the school's all-time leading scorer. He also left without his degree. Twenty-three years later, he has taken care of some unfinished business. Jones, now 44, will graduate from Wisconsin with a hard-earned degree in physics. Rekindling the memory of a jazz-rock musical group from the late '60s and early '70s, Jones summarized his academic odyssey with a spin. "Blood, sweat and tears,'' he said, "and frustration.'' But he's finally graduating. "There will be a feeling of accomplishment,'' said Jones, "in finishing something that I started.'' The starting point for Jones, an all-state player from Rockford (Ill.) Boylan High School, would be 1986, his freshman season with the Badgers. As an athlete, he didn't know how good he could be yet. "I didn't grow up dreaming about playing in the NBA,'' said Jones, who was anything but a child prodigy. "I didn't grow up dreaming to play major college basketball. It just kind of happened.'' As a sophomore, Jones lost his mother, Asa. Although he could still find his way around the basketball court ― he was the team MVP as a senior ― he lacked direction in the 20 » VARSITY MAY 16, 2013 classroom. "When I left here,'' Jones said, "I was in ag journalism, and that was in an effort to find any major I could just to kind of get through school and keep playing basketball, basically.'' Jones played professionally for over 10 years in Turkey, Spain, Japan, the Philippines and Mexico. After retiring, he managed two martial arts studios in La Crosse, Wis., and helped raise a family. But there was a void and a thirst for further education; especially in physics, something he enjoyed in high school. So he enrolled at Winona (Minn.) State University to see where it might lead. "It wasn't that I had to come back to school to get a degree,'' he said. "But I wanted to learn more about physics and how things interact; I wanted to learn more about energy and momentum.'' The best place for that was Madison, he decided. But, first, he had to convince others on campus that he was serious. Why do you want to come back to school? Why do you want to get into Letters and Science? Why physics? Why, why, why? "They wanted to make sure that the situation was even tenable,'' said Jones who was understanding of their concerns. "But I had it all mapped out. I wasn't taking it lightly.'' So what did he tell them when they asked why? "I couldn't really give them a reason as far as an academic, thought-filled why,'' he said. "It was just something that I needed to do. I had to get it done.'' Getting into labs was as challenging as defending some of the better low post players in the Big Ten for the 6-foot-6, 245-pound Jones. "I knocked on a lot of doors and it took a little doing,'' he said. Jones was both persuasive and persistent. For starters, it got him into Rock Mackie's lab, no small feat. His follow-up work with microscopy has exposed him to initiatives for cancer research. "What I had in mind for working in a lab wasn't exactly what happened,'' he said. "I ended up working in imaging, which is kind of cool ― building, designing and maintaining complex microscopes.'' If you're wondering, Jones hasn't picked up a basketball in 10 years. He will graduate Sunday and begin work in July as an IT engineer for a company, Forsythe Technology, in Skokie, Ill. "People have asked me about speaking to current athletes and trying to give them some inspiration,'' said Jones, who will have hip replacement surgery before relocating to the Chicago area. "The problem is, if you were to ask me if I regretted not getting my degree when I was 20 or 21, I would have said 'No'' because I didn't know what I wanted to do.'' Once he found direction, he could not be denied. "I imagine if people were thinking about coming back to school,'' he said, "they might hear my story and say, "Maybe it can work for me, too.'''