Javicia Cole couldn’t bear to watch.
As her son, R.J., stepped to the foul line for a pair of free throws with 11 seconds left that would have all but clinched a UConn victory, mom had to turn her back.
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“I was nervous,” said Javicia, who was on her feet for just about all of UConn’s Big East bout with Creighton on Sunday at Gampel Pavilion. “Very stressed.”
Cole missed both free throws. Creighton’s Damien Jefferson tied the game on a last-second jumper, and the Bluejays won in overtime.
Unfortunately, Javicia didn’t avert her eyes from Twitter on the 2 1/2-hour ride home back to Linden, N.J. with her husband, Rob. It wasn’t pretty.
“I hate R.J. Cole.” “He sucks.” “He doesn’t need to play.” “He needs to come off the bench.” Those were just some of the angry tweets she saw directed at her son.
“I mean, as a parent, it’s hurtful to read some of the things that were said from a standpoint of attacking who he is,” Javicia said. “Everybody saw he missed the two free throws, OK. But he was 6-for-6 prior to those two free throws. They want to point out one person, which is fine. But some of the words that I read just kind of attacking him, I didn’t like it at all.”
UConn Nation, earlier today was a tough loss. I missed two HUGE free throws, but as the point guard and one of the leaders of the team I’d put myself in that position every time because that’s who I am and I have the up most confidence in myself and my abilities. I owe y’all one.
— RJ Cole (@rjuice_) December 21, 2020She took a break from scrolling her Twitter feed, but soon saw she was tagged in one of her notifications. She hopped back on Twitter and was surprised by what she saw. A tweet by R.J.:
“UConn Nation, earlier today was a tough loss. I missed two HUGE free throws, but as the point guard and one of the leaders of the team I’d put myself in that position every time because that’s who I am and I have the (utmost) confidence in myself and my abilities. I owe y’all one.”
It was an astonishing act of accountability, especially from a 21-year-old college athlete, and it quickly drew praise and compliments from teammates both current (James Bouknight) and former (Shyquan Gibbs), UConn assistant coaches Tom Moore and Kimani Young and hundreds of others.
As big as those missed free throws were, Cole’s tweet amounted to a game-winning 3-pointer in accountability. UConn may not have won on the basketball floor on Sunday, but R.J. Cole won Twitter in a landslide.
Javicia wasn’t necessarily expecting it.
“Because R.J. is very quiet,” she said. “He’s a private person, and he doesn’t really show his emotions. He kind of keeps things close to the cuff. Just to see that expression of vulnerability, really, was different for me to see from him. At least publicly.”
But it hardly surprised her that R.J. would be so accountable, so eager to take the blame, move on and prove himself the next time.
“He owns it,” Javicia noted. “He’s very much a team player, he’s very much into getting his teammates involved. He’s gonna hold himself accountable for whatever it is that he may have contributed or didn’t. That’s just who he is.”
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Indeed, that aspect of R.J. Cole’s personality comes as no surprise to those who know him best.
“He was a very, very mature kid,” recalled Bob Hurley Sr., who coached R.J. for three years at St. Anthony High in Jersey City, N.J. “His parents are terrific people ... The group of kids that he was surrounded by, the people around them always had balance in life.”
After Sunday’s game, R.J. called his dad, a former star at LIU-Brooklyn who R.J. always turns to for basketball advice. Rob Cole said it was a good conversation. He told his son to keep his head up, and also gave some technical advice: Next time, in a big spot like that, instead of taking his normal two dribbles before taking the foul shot, maybe take a third dribble and a deep breath.
“That lets all the anxiety out,” Rob noted.
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Rob Cole doesn’t have any social media accounts. He lets Javicia handle all that. But he did see some of the tweets on Sunday.
“We live in a society where it’s OK to voice your opinion,” Rob noted. “And, it’s OK to prove them wrong.”
R.J. Cole has been doing that all his life. Not heavily recruited out of St. Anthony’s? He went and scored over 1,500 points in two seasons at Howard before transferring to UConn two years ago, sitting out last season. Not great defensively? Did you see how he locked down Creighton star Marcus Zegarowski on Sunday, holding the Big East preseason player of the year to 4-for-14 shooting, 1-for-8 from 3?
Rob remembers a St. Anthony’s game against St. Patricks, where R.J. had a chance for a game-winning jumper with about 12 seconds left but tried to pass to a teammate instead and had the ball stolen. He took accountability for the mistake and learned from it.
Javicia recalls a game at Howard when Cole struggled mightily. Afterwards, he told his teammates and coaches it wasn’t something he could do again, that the team needed him.
“He owned it,” Javicia said. “He was better for it the next time.”
Hurley Sr. remembers Cole as an easy kid to deal with while at St. Anthony’s, even reminding him of his own son (who now coaches R.J. at UConn). The youngest of a group of kids, along with Jagan Mosely, Idris Joyner and Gibbs, that played ball together for years and helped lead Hurley’s final championship team at St. Anthony’s in 2016. All went on to play in college (Mosely at Georgetown, Joyner at Merrimack, Gibbs at NJIT). Mosely is now playing professionally in Europe; the other two have entered the workforce with good jobs.
All have been successful, and Hurley Sr. has no doubt R.J. Cole will be, as well.
And there’s this: UConn is scheduled to get another crack at Creighton on Jan. 23.
“I’d hate to be on the other side,” Rob Cole noted, “when they play at Creighton.”
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