CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — The baseball community in Illinois and beyond is continuing to mourn the loss of a coaching legend.

Itch Jones, a three-time Big Ten champion coach, died on Monday, February 17, after a long-time battle with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. He spent 15 seasons coaching the Illini after 21 seasons at the helm of the SIU program.

It was in Carbondale that Jones and Dan Hartleb developed a relationship. Hartleb joined the Saluki lineup after two seasons of JUCO baseball. Upon graduation, Hartleb joined the coaching staff and followed Jones to Champaign to serve as pitching coach.

“The thing that was awesome about him is he would allow you to question what he did,” said Hartleb. “He would always say, ‘What would you have done?’ And I would tell him, and then he would tell me his thought process.”

In 2001, Hartleb earned the title of associate head coach at Illinois, then became the head coach in 2005 when Jones retired.

Hartleb recalled receiving a call from then-athletic director Ron Guenther while on a recruiting trip in Chicago, asking Hartleb to come to his office the following morning.

“He told me that Itch walked in the day before and retired,” said Hartleb. “What [Itch] did is he went in and told him if he would hire me that he would step aside. So yeah, that’s the second point where, like, took care of me, put me in a position to, you know, have an opportunity to coach here at Illinois as the head coach. And, you know, I’ve been very, very blessed.”

As Hartleb took over the Illini program, he said Jones kept his distance, not attending a single game in Hartleb’s first season for fear of being perceived as overbearing. Their relationship continued, though, with Hartleb seeking guidance often.

“Calling him when things were going good or bad, you know, just asking him his opinion, I knew he’d go no further,” said Harteb. “He was going to be honest with me, which is really important. And he had that great knack of knowing when things weren’t going well. You know, you’re about to get to the edge of the cliff and all of sudden he’d call you and talk you off of it.”

Hartleb credits Jones with giving him his start and saw him as another father figure. He said that while there are no plans to hold a celebration of life on Illinois’s campus, he and Jones’s family have been in talks to honor the legend at SIU in the future.