Draft Prospect Profile: OPP Malaya Jones
Jones has harnessed her explosive skills to become a much more well-rounded player.
Malaya Jones will arguably be the most feared player in the Mountain West Conference in 2024. She’s settled in as the premium player on Colorado State’s roster, earning her team’s trust with both her work ethic and statistical results. It hasn’t been a direct path for her to reach this point, but Jones planted her flag in a big way during the 2023 season.
Last year’s performance represented an obvious leap forward for Jones as a scorer. Her volume of offensive touches nearly doubled from the year before, crossing the 1000 mark, and she converted those touches into kills at a higher more frequently while also hitting a lower rate of errors. Those factors combined for an impressive .309 hitting percentage on 466 kills.
“I always tell people when they ask me, like, ‘What goes on in your head?’ and I say, ‘I have a killer mindset.’ When I go up and swing at a ball, I want to pound it to the ground. I want to destroy it. Like every single ball that I approach, I just want to have the most impact that I possibly can,” she said in an early June interview.
“Teams now know that she is the player getting 50 swings a match. Like that's not a surprise to anyone going into this season, so she's going to have these big scouting reports on how to stop her,” observed Colorado State head coach Emily Kohan when we spoke. “At match point, people know she's probably getting the ball. And so how are they going to stop her, and what's she going to do to then continue to improve her range to be able to score?”
Instead of being overawed by the extra attention given to her by opposing defenses, Jones fed off it. In the end, not many teams were able to dampen her scoring output. There were only seven games in which she hit sub-.200, compared to eight games she finished with a hitting percentage above .400.
“I have a level of intensity that just kind of radiates off of me. Because we're not speaking through the net, it's all in play. It's also how hard I swing at the ball, I think that definitely makes me intimidating, and I think also just my consistency and how well I've been playing, it's intimidating to other teams, and that's what I want it to be. I wanna be that person that they're scouting for and that they need to prepare the most for,” said Jones.
“I love when teams scout me and I can see them actively talking at the net about what they need to watch,” she continued. “If anything, it makes me feel more confident. I honestly feel humbled that they took the time to prepare for me and that just boosts my self-confidence even more. So whenever I see that, it's not really like I get in my head too much. It's more kind of like a push to be even better and show them that there's a reason why they had to scout me.”
Jones isn’t just the big fish in a small pond. Coach Kohan was unreserved in her praise of the athletic foundation that her top player has to work with.
“She's extremely powerful. She's got these huge hands and feet, which can, can help you a lot in volleyball. If you put a radar males miles per hour on her attack she's just got a really elite cannon of an arm and we've been able to refine that and train that. She'd been able to increase how high she attacks. So, you know, she's touching 10’3, 10’4, and she's in better shape to be able to hit that high for longer in the match, right? She doesn't get as tired,” explained Kohan.
“She's just incredibly coordinated as an athlete, if she were to, I don't know, pick up pickleball or something. She's just an incredibly coordinated athlete with great hand-eye coordination. Some of that stuff, again, is just something that's innate to them and you try to refine it, but it's not a lot of things that you can teach a kid that's terrible at those things to be, you know, a heck of a lot more coordinated.”
Jones is also unique in that, although she’s entering her fifth season as a college athlete, she has two years of eligibility remaining. She was initially a Colorado State recruit, but she decommitted from the Rams in favor of an offer from USC. Jones redshirted during her freshman season, and in the end, never played a single set for the Women of Troy before hitting the transfer portal. After reuniting with Colorado State in the portal, both she and the school were eager to get her on the court, but she was once again redshirted, this time due to NCAA eligibility rules.
“In the beginning it was difficult to try to find the positive and not playing. Obviously everyone wants to play, it's like everyone's dream to come into college and play right away. But over time and just growing up and becoming more mature, I just knew that this was just a great opportunity to get two years of collegiate training before I started my actual eligibility in my career,” remembered Jones.
“I was pretty young when I kind of got into this high level world. I would say structure in my lifestyle, I think it just catapulted me to a completely different level. So when I kind of entered my first year, I felt a lot more comfortable with that transition into the game,” she reflected.
Reflecting on that time in her career, Jones learned to love getting input and advice from the people who surround her. Now she seeks it out from anyone who will provide it, both in games and in practice.
“I don’t believe in perfection. I think always chasing that is gonna be one of my biggest strengths for sure. I'm highly critical of myself in that way, and I love hearing feedback. That's honestly all I want. I want as much feedback as I can possibly get just to be able to better myself for the future,” she said.
“When people say, like, ‘I see that this is open, maybe try hitting it there,’ or ‘You have a huge seam of line, try to cover that,’ I think that's been huge because you can't get better unless your teammates are communicating to you. Because I don't always see what's going on on the other side of the net.”
“I would talk to a lot of my friends about, ‘Well, what are you seeing? What do you watch film on? What do you see from me?’ They were like, ‘Well, you hit a lot of cross.’ So I've noticed a lot in games, a lot of the opponents will kind of start a lot farther in because that is my favorite shot, the hard angle from the opposite is definitely my favorite. When I'm able to hit that, it's just the best feeling ever. One of my goals as well is to get more comfortable in my evolution of all of my shots,” she explained.
Jones also made meaningful improvements as a defender in 2023. She played middle at the club level and spent the first part of her collegiate career bouncing between positions along the net, but finally found a permanent home on the right side last year. That means at the same time as she was taking up the mantle of star hitter, Jones was also carrying the biggest defensive workload of her life. Kohan entrusted her with a six-rotation assignment, which was a bit of a baptism by fire, but she came out the other side an improved player.
“You see her raw athleticism, but nobody had really trained her in the back row. So it's just new for her, and a lot of times your athleticism can't get you out of jail in the back row,” said Kohan. “We designed drills that are going to pick on her defensively. So we put her in her right back position and we start drills or play games where it's like, ‘Hey, you've got to hit at Malaya every single time.’ You know, there's frustration in that because people are hitting at her and it's not always up and perfect.”
Far from resenting the difficulties that she faced as she adapted to her new responsibilities, Jones has embraced them.
“Last season was I kind of pushed up for the tip and I was really shallow in my placement, just because I wasn't as experienced and I didn't exactly know where I was supposed to be. And even after a lot of coaching and telling me, ‘Mayala, you need to be here,’ you don't get used to it until you do it enough. Just being able to see the block and where I need to be around it and to stay low to the ground is going to be really big,” she said.
The objective that Kohan has placed in front of Jones for the 2024 season is to become a “weaponized server.” In her first shot at regular service opportunities, she landed 25 serves for aces. That’s a respectable total, but Kohan envisions greater things for Jones if they can build a serve for her that better utilizes her powerful physicality.
“She has all the skills. She has that arm. She can jump high. We are working on a different type of serve for her this year. I'm going to call it a little sexier. And I think the crowd is going to be like, ‘Ooh, what is this?’ She can try to lean on her athleticism in the serve even this year, that it can be a scoring type of serve rather than a ‘get it in’ type of serve. That was something last year — she was just a very safe server and Malaya is not a safe player,” said Kohan.
If Jones can successfully integrate a deadly serve and competent back row defense with her dominant presence in the front row, it’s tough to imagine who in the Mountain West will be able to stop her. In player development, it’s an axiom that growth isn’t linear. It may not all click immediately for Jones, who will be asked to do a ton for her team in 2024. On the other hand, she spent so long simmering on the bench that it may come more naturally to her than others.
“Every time we've asked her to get better at something she does, she just keeps leveling up every single time we put a new challenge in front of her,” reflected Kohan.
Jones’ chances of a professional future in the sport have gotten much better as the volleyball scene has exploded here in the states. The PVF has shown a willingness to give chances to talented players from any background, and because of her eligibility situation, Jones has another two years to prove herself on the court without worrying too much about academics.
Additionally, as Coach Kohan was quick to point out, Colorado State is a better volleyball program than the face value of their conference might suggest.
The team has been promised all the NIL support they need. They went toe-to-toe with Kentucky and Stanford last year and finished the season ninth in attendance among NCAA women’s volleyball. Coach Kohan and her staff assembled an even bolder schedule this year, with an exhibition against Creighton and non-conference games against Florida, Michigan State, Notre Dame, and Oregon on the slate. Jones will have every opportunity to prove herself against top college competition.
“I do have a lot of potential and I push myself to be great. I’ll see where that takes me. I wanna become the best volleyball player I can possibly be and push all of those limits,” she said when I asked her about her pro potential. “Just for my own sanity, I don't like to say ‘This is exactly where I need to be,’ because I think that can create spaces of disappointment. I just believe in myself and my capabilities and know that my work ethic will take me to the highest possible level that I wanna get to one day.”
Personality makes a big difference in whether professional coaches are willing to give a player from a smaller conference a chance, and Jones strikes a tidy balance. Her confidence is unwavering, but she steers clear of the childish arrogance that is epidemic among many top athletes. She has an interest in coaching and interned with the Rams’ summer programs to get a feel for what it takes to work on the sidelines. I came away from our conversation with the sense that she believes in her ability to accomplish anything and it drives her to work even harder when things don’t go her way. When a player with her physical traits also possesses that mentality, it makes for a good gamble.
Some quotes were lightly edited for clarity. To read the full transcript of my interviews with Jones and Kohan, click here.