The scars snake across the back of his head like a road map.

This is uniquely fitting because Andrew Jones has been through quite the journey. He was a basketball junkie growing up in Del Paso Heights and Oak Park who wanted to become a coach, and then became one. He met the girl of his dreams while on the job, Julie coaching women’s track and field at Sacramento City College and Jones heading the men’s basketball program.

They got married, had a son and named him AJ. Life was grand.

Then the detour.

It was just over 10 years ago that Jones was floored with a diagnosis. He coached a game with double-vision and wondered what ailed him. It was a brain tumor. A golf-ball sized mass was removed, but the uncertainty remains.

“All I wanted was 10 more years,” Jones said last week. “Give me 10 years of life so I can see my son grow to become 20. That’s all I wanted. That’s what I needed.”

Jones got those 10 years, and then some. He’s working on a lifetime deal here with inspiring strong results. AJ, the good son, is 20. He happens to be one of the vital cogs for the Panthers, who enter this week at 17-2, the program’s best start to a season since 1946. We know this because the 57-year-old Jones knows this as a historian of the oldest college in the immediate Sacramento region.

Jones has poured himself into his craft, a hoops lifer with a lot of life yet to live. He’s been a part of the Panthers program as a coach for 32 years and the head man for 24. It’s the only job he has had and the only one he’s wanted. The only thing Jones cherishes more than his players and all things burgundy and gold is family and appreciating every single day.

“The tumor is gone, but what caused it never really goes away,” Jones said. “Doctors think it had been growing in my head since I was about 10. My last chemo session was in February of 2021. I get an MRI every six months. I’m never really in the clear. I remember being terrified when I first heard the diagnosis and waiting for Julie to come home to tell her. I was more worried about her and AJ.

“Now I want 10 more years so I can see AJ at 30.”

And maybe AJ as a grandfather, coach? Well, not exactly.

“No, no,” Jones said with a laugh. “I didn’t have AJ until I was 37.”

Jones is winning this epic battle with the tumor, to be sure. He’s still here. He’s still the same old guy, the North Gymnasium lights at Sac City sparkling off his polished dome. Jones looks the part of intense coach, working the sideline, working the referees, urging his players to set screens, to compete. But he’s hardly a mad man. He has never been confused with a fuming Bobby Knight. Life’s too short to sweat the small things such as back-door plays or missed free throws.

Jones doesn’t glance upward if he can help it because he’ll have double vision. It’s impossible for him to forget what he’s endured.

Days after a thrilling overtime victory against rival Cosumnes River College in Big 8 Conference play, inching the program closer to Jones’ first conference crown, there was a bit of despair. Sac City rallied from 20 points down to take the lead late at Delta College in Stockton on Jan. 16, only to fall in the final seconds, 73-71.

The bus ride home was a quiet one, but Jones has suffered much worse. Scared out of your wits and wondering if you’d live another year, for one. Chemo sessions where your taste buds check out, for another.

Three years ago, Jones experienced a five-win season. He had five players. AJ sat with him on the bench to offer an ear and provide support, and to make it look like there were others on the bench besides the coaches.

AJ goes by Andrew Ferrara-Jones on the roster, and he is known as a “handful” for opponents as a 6-3 sophomore guard from nearby West Campus High School. He is a shooter, a ball handler, a thinker in high tops. He is averaging 17.8 points and 6.1 rebounds. His late free throws polished off CRC in that overtime epic, 90-83.

“I feel so blessed, so thankful to be able to coach these guys, including AJ,” Jones said. “Very happy about that. Just so happy about that.”

So is the son, who said: “It’s been great playing for my dad. I’m glad he’s here. Glad he’s alive. It’s been an experience I’ll never forget.”

AJ said he doesn’t see himself getting into teaching and coaching, but he said he will use his father’s example of perseverance in any walk of life. He wants to major in business.

The community college ranks are a haven for the overlooked, the still growing and developing. Sac City’s roster is full of former Bee All-Metro stars who compete with the gusto of something to prove. Each of them wants to land at a four-year program anywhere across the country to graduate and to play ball. Jones’ aim is to help them achieve those goals. He has helped scores of players reach four-year programs, be it Division I, II, III or smaller.

Drew Fischer is a 6-foot sophomore guard from Liberty Ranch High School in Galt. He leads the state with 8.5 assists, muscles and hustles his way for 8.8 rebounds and is crafty enough to score 7.6 points per game.

Coach Jones made Fisher his primary recruiting target. He wanted to build this team of promise around him.

“He’s special,” the coach said.

“I wanted to play for a good program, to keep playing, and it’s been a great fit,” Fischer said. “We all get along great, and we love our coach.”

Sidney Duplessis is a 5-11 freshman guard who also runs the show for the Panthers. The Monterey Trail High School graduate is averaging 22.1 points and 4.9 assists. He sounds like a coach, which makes sense since his father, also named Sidney, is the head coach at Sacramento High.

And small world: The elder Duplessis was a high-scoring guard for Jones some 30 years ago.

The biggest man on the roster also has the coolest nickname. That’s Dajon “Money” Lott, and no one calls the 6-9 sophomore from Elk Grove anything but “Money.” Lott is an example of what a JC can do for a man: a place to grow, to develop, to dominate.

Lott was a driving force for Elk Grove High’s CIF state championship run two years ago. He’s improving by the week, averaging 19.2 points, 10.2 rebounds and four blocked shots. With a shock of hair that makes him look like a 7-footer, Lott can hit 3-pointers, run the floor, score inside with a variety of moves and turn back shots. He also loves to play to the crowd, which squeezes into the old 1930s-era gym to make for a festive scene.

He, too, is eager to see where life will take him and thankful for a coach who has leaned on him to help lead the charge.

“I’m pleased, but the only downside is I feel our two losses, we should have won,” Lott said. “As far as my progression through the season, I’m trying to make it to the next level, which is Division I. As long as I keep getting better as a teammate and a player, it’s possible. I always have room to improve.”

Paul Carmazzi has watched the Coach Jones show since the start. He was instrumental in getting him on board as part of the hiring committee three decades ago. Carmazzi remains a fixture on campus as an assistant athletic director.

“Andrew is such a good guy who has always been so consistent, and his teams have always been competitive,” Carmazzi said. “And to coach his son, I know he’s proud. I know he’s loving this. When Andrew went through the brain tumor scare and surgery, he could’ve easily stopped coaching, but this is so important to him. We’re thrilled to have him.”

Jones didn’t get into coaching to chase championships. He did it to mold young men and teams, not that winning isn’t fun. That’s why there is a scoreboard. With 300-plus victories, Jones is the winningest coach in program history. He helped create and nurture the Sac City Hall of Fame athletic banquets. Jones is moved to tears when former players come and embrace him, some of whom became teachers, coaches, doctors or members of the FBI.

It’s no surprise that four of Jones’ assistant coaches are former Panthers student-athletes who played for him: Steve Jordan, Victor Nance, B.J. Walden and Kevin Taylor. They don’t just talk about family here. They live it.

Jones is a 1988 Sac City grad who went on to graduate from Cal. He was for years the young-guy coach on campus. Now, he’s the gray beard, and he is delighted about it. He got those 10 years and then some.

Jones is the physical education chair at Sac City, where the weight room is his haven. Last week, Panthers baseball coach Derek Sullivan stopped by in search of his young son’s lost and treasured Sacramento Kings hoodie. Of course, Jones knew where it was. It had been dropped next to a workout machine. Jones always has the answer.

“He knows everything!” Sullivan said.

Nance scored 42 points in a 2004 game for Jones, which remains a school record. Jones recruited Nance out of a physical education class at Sacramento High through the recommendation of then-Sac City track coach Joe Silva. Nance was thunder dunking in blue jeans and Jones saw stardom, if the kid was willing to commit to it.

“I owe coach Jones a lot,” Nance said. “He was the first coach to believe in me. I’m an example of what a JC can do for a man. I graduated from college at Concordia University (in Irvine). As long as you embrace the challenge of college and work at it, anything is possible. Coach Jones changed the trajectory of my life.”

Jones best body of work is this: impacting lives while still living the good life with no stop signs in view.