A lot of people hear "no" and think that's it. They accept it. Maybe they grumble and resent it, but they're resigned to it.

Trey McKinney Jones heard "no" hundreds of times. Every time he opened his mailbox and found no letters from colleges. Every time he checked his voicemail and found no messages from coaches.

McKinney Jones was an all-Southeast Conference basketball player, a state track champion and a high honor roll student at South Milwaukee High School, but the college basketball recruiting experts looked right past him.

"No."

Instead of accepting their rejection and disinterest, however, McKinney Jones' father got to work.

Dwight Jones compiled his son's highlights on a YouTube video and created a website with his son's resume. And after putting in a full day as an engineer in management at Rockwell Automation, he would settle down at his phone every night and become a salesman.

Six years later, McKinney Jones is a starting guard and solid, all-around player for the Miami Hurricanes, the fifth-ranked team in the country having one of the best seasons in school history. The Hurricanes, who won the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament Sunday, will play Pacific on Friday in the NCAA Tournament as the No. 2-seeded team in the East Regional.

McKinney Jones has made it this far because he heard just one "yes." Well, two, really.

So how could so many coaches miss on McKinney Jones?

To be fair, McKinney Jones did start out at South Milwaukee as a 5-foot-10 freshman. He played a little bit of AAU basketball, but with his late August birthday he was younger than everyone else and a lot smaller.

"He never really got a lot of playing time and there were several AAU teams that cut him," Jones said.

So Jones asked the coaches if his son could just practice with the team, even if he wasn't on the roster, and several coaches were pretty nice about it.

"And then sure enough, little by little, he showed he had enough skill," Jones said. "Even though he was 20, 30 pounds lighter and got knocked around quite a bit, he still played really tough and really aggressive."

Jones also sought the help of his brother, Mark Jones, who played briefly with the Orlando Magic and also professionally overseas. Before that he played college basketball at Minnesota and Central Florida.

"He'd take 1,000 practice shots in the evening whenever he was home," Jones said of his brother. "Well, guess who was rebounding for him 1,000 times? Eventually I started bringing Trey to those workouts with my little brother and said, if I'm going to do this, you could at least show Trey how to shoot and different dribbling drills."

McKinney Jones began this routine in the sixth grade and kept at it.

"There are a lot of kids who, if you ask them to practice two, three times a week and you ask them to shoot 700, 800 shots, they're unwilling to do it," Jones said. "They want to play video games. But the one thing Trey was always willing to do was put in the time that I asked to improve."

McKinney Jones became the highest-scoring point guard in the conference in high school, averaging 15 points for the Rockets. He also averaged 6 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game as a senior. He helped South Milwaukee win its first North Division championship in 20 years.

Even as McKinney Jones grew to 6-2, his coach kept him at guard, his natural position, rather than pull him off the ball. He was a really good player.