James Jones takes issue with the style of most coaches around college basketball these days.
Does the Yale men’s basketball coach have a problem with the bloated NIL budgets and dubious fifth-year eligibility cases stoking tensions around the sport? Perhaps. Yale is one of just 37 Division I programs to opt out of revenue sharing ahead of the 2026-27 season and rarely dips into the transfer portal for new players.
But in this case, the 62-year-old coach’s grievance is literal. James has worn a full suit on the sidelines since starting his career as an assistant with Albany in 1990, but in 2026, that choice places him into a shrinking group of college basketball coaches.
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“I think that dressing up on the sideline and letting the people know that you’re a professional is important,” Jones told CT Insider. “…It’s not that hard to do, and I think we’ve taken a lazy way out as a group of coaches. I just don’t agree with it.”
According to reporting from Mid Major Madness published earlier this year, just 36 head coaches — with an average age of 51 — wore a full suit on the sideline during the 2025-26 season, and another 37 wore partial formal wear, such as a suit jacket with no tie or vice versa. Combined, this group makes up just 20% of all Division I men’s basketball coaches.
However, Jones lives among well-dressed outliers in Connecticut, as four of the state’s seven Division I head coaches wear at least some aspects of a full suit on game days — he’s joined by UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley, New Haven’s Ted Hotaling and Quinnipiac’s Tom Pecora. Connecticut joins Virginia as the only state with multiple Division I programs in which a majority of coaches dress formally, and since the assistant coaches at these four programs also wear suits, seemingly the Nutmeg State wins the tiebreaker as college basketball’s best-dressed state.
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“I think it takes away from the professionalism of who we are and what we do,” Jones said. “Game day is no longer special to some, because you look like you do every day in practice. Part of the reason why I continue to do it is because you want your players to know that this is a little different. This is not practice; this is game day, and we have to be ready to go.”
Family ties
Jones has been surrounded by fashion for as long as he can remember. His family worked in the dry cleaning business on Long Island, and Jones’ father always dressed sharply, holding the most influence over the eight-time Ivy League champion’s sense of style.
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For the majority of Jones’ coaching career, however, his decision to wear suits never prompted such a deep dive into his personal upbringing.
“Everybody wore suits up until COVID,” Jones said. “[After] COVID, people switched and started to do less than, and I saw no reason to do less than. Me and my staff, we have just kept doing what we were doing before COVID.”
In the era of quarter-zip hegemony, Jones’ collection has only grown, rotating between around 20 suits during the season. Jones shops at New Haven mainstay Enson’s Menswear, which recently celebrated 100 years of business, where he’s started a recent tradition of purchasing a new suit after qualifying for the NCAA Tournament — he likely started planning a short walk from Yale’s campus to the Chapel Street storefront after Trevor Mullin drilled a pair of free throws to give the Bulldogs a four-point lead in this year’s Ivy League Final with 13 seconds remaining, but Penn’s TJ Power responded with a pair of staggering 3-pointers to force overtime and eventually steal a memorable victory for the Quakers.
The dress decorum around Jones’ program has loosened somewhat after 27 years on the job. Bulldogs players are no longer required to dress formally for away games, with Jones prioritizing comfort on increasingly long road trips. Yale assistants can also dress as they please on game days, but Jones finds that his personal style keeps the rest of his bench in order.
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“I will tell you that my assistants don’t always like it, and I let them know that they’re free to wear whatever they like,” Jones said. “But since they don’t want to dress down from me, they just follow my lead. And you know, most every coach in the league has told me their wife or significant other is pissed off at them because they don’t look as good as I do on game day.”
STORRS, CONNECTICUT – NOVEMBER 03: New Haven Chargers head coach Ted Hotaling coaches his team against the Connecticut Huskies during the first half of an NCAA men’s basketball game.
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Ted Hotaling was among these snazzy assistants pacing the Yale sideline for five seasons, first playing for Jones as a guard for Albany and later reuniting him on the Bulldogs staff following a brief professional career in the United Kingdom. These days, Hotaling works nearby as the New Haven men’s basketball coach, a program that played its debut Division I season last year and places similar expectations on attire.
Growing up along the Hudson River close to Albany, Hotaling’s commitment to a full suit also stems from his upbringing. Hotaling’s father always wore a tie to teach fourth grade, and his mother, also a schoolteacher, adored Dallas Cowboys icon Tom Landry and spoke about her preference for well-dressed coaches.
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Hotaling is a bit less precise in curating his outfits — the 54-year-old coach says that he’s primarily a bargain suit shopper and admits that matching patterns leaves him a bit out of his depth. And he doesn’t attribute the sport’s decline of sideline suits to the same moral decay.
“I don’t think wearing a suit separates you or makes you different or makes you special. I think it’s all preference,” Hotaling said. “…I do understand why coaches don’t wear suits. It is convenient, especially road games.”
Hotaling also doesn’t ask his players to wear suits while traveling to away games, citing possible economic limitations for players at a level of basketball with limited NIL opportunities. Similarly, he lifted the dress code for his assistant coaches earning relatively meager Division II salaries during New Haven’s time in the Northeast-10 conference. Ahead of New Haven’s debut season in Division I, which saw Penn State visit the 1,000-seat Hazell Center and included matchups with UConn, Seton Hall and Vanderbilt, Hotaling and his coaching staff agreed to bring back a suit mandate.
“Game days are special,” Hotaling said. “I think it feels pretty good to be on the sideline in a suit. It’s a little bit of a throwback. But in no way, shape, or form do I think it distinguishes one coach from another.”
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Very superstitious
UConn staggered into the Final Four in Indianapolis this past season, looking to will themselves toward a third national championship in four seasons. Silas Demary Jr. limped around the backcourt, doing an admirable job of limiting some of the nation’s most explosive scoring guards at Lucas Oil Stadium, and Solo Ball hoisted shot after shot despite a shoulder injury that required off-season surgery and ruled him out for the upcoming 2026-27 campaign.
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – APRIL 06: Head coach Dan Hurley of the UConn Huskies reacts during the second half of a game against the Michigan Wolverines in the National Championship.
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Still, nothing on the UConn sideline was more tattered than Dan Hurley’s suit. Included on the long list of Dan Hurley superstitions is his lucky suit, a navy-blue outfit that the two-time national champion will wear during every NCAA Tournament game. UConn’s battle with Michigan for the national championship this April meant six games in three weekends for the lucky suit, which began to crumple from this regular use and Hurley’s endless gesticulating.
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“The suit is in bad shape. I’m not going to lie to you, guys,” Hurley told reporters after UConn’s Final Four win against Illinois. “The pants are fine. It’s the jacket that is really — the lining is a problem. There’s like three holes. When I stick my arm in the right, there’s like three different places, and if you can see it, it’s like the lining is coming through.”
“It’s actually going past the dress shirt. I’d say my biggest problem is the lining in the jacket is a complete mess. I’m going to have to get a tailor in the off-season.”
Hurley often wore a necktie during his early coaching stops at Wagner and Rhode Island, but he’s largely opted for an open-collar look since arriving at UConn, giving him enough airflow to admonish nearby officials. Otherwise, the New Jersey native paces the sideline each game in a suit jacket and pants, a dress shirt and some “really nice shoes.”
Few coaches anywhere in the sporting world take superstition more seriously than Hurley, but there are good luck charms embedded into the suits of other well-dressed Connecticut coaches. Jones, for example, recalls that he always had to wear a white shirt during his early years in charge of the Bulldogs, although the veteran coach notes that he’s become less superstitious with age.
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Hotaling, meanwhile, wears a largely superstition-free suit off US Route 1, tying the outcome of Chargers games to possibly more impactful variables.
“It’s very random for me,” Hotaling said. “If we win a game, and you wear a certain tie, you might wear that tie again. But it’s not really that well thought out. It might be on a whim; it might last for only one game. I’m not as superstitious as some coaches. Hopefully, we practice well and can overcome any superstitions in the game.