Mike Jones followed the legendary Morgan Wootten and won 511 games at the high school basketball institution DeMatha Catholic (Md.) before moving on this season as Virginia Tech associate head coach, and he will be glued to his television set on Thursday night when Villanova meets Michigan in a Sweet 16 South Region showdown in San Antonio.

Because Jones coached Michigan big man Hunter Dickinson.

And he coached Villanova guard Justin Moore.

Moore and Dickinson played three years together. Won a WCAC (Washington Catholic Athletic Conference) championship together when Moore was a junior and Dickinson was a sophomore.

Only one will go to the Elite Eight.

“Justin is the all-time winningest player in DeMatha history,” Jones told The Post. “I believe that is with 123 wins. Hunter Dickinson is at 121, but Hunter basically missed, because of COVID, six more games his senior year. We didn’t play the final six games that we would have played. There’s a rivalry between the two of them that it is pretty clear that Hunter would have passed Justin had COVID not hit.”

Jones remembers Dickinson as a 7-year-old when he recruited older brother Ben, who later joined the DeMatha staff. Hunter, now 7-foot-1, was 6-9 as a freshman.

“Great kid. One of the smartest players I’ve ever coached, and most of the times you don’t think of a big man as being smart, but he’s got the brain of a guard, passes the ball so well, never gets sped up,” Jones said.

Dickinson has always been a colorful character.

“He’s that way 100 percent of the time, on and off the court,” Jones said. “It’s nothing phony about it. As intense as he is and as much of a competitor as he is, he’s got a personality, and he embraces it. A lot of times you get big kids like that growing up, they’re shy because they’re kind of awkward. And that’s not Hunter.”

Talking smack is.

“I remember in high school, I’m on a group text with another coach that we are gonna play,” Jones said. “And Hunter basically texts both of us, but talking trash to the coach, who he had a really good relationship with, because the coach coached him, but we’re literally getting ready to play him, and Hunter’s talking trash to the coach — ‘This is what I’m gonna do to you guys tonight,’ or something like that. And I’m like, ‘Hunter, man, chill out.’ He’s like, ‘Ahh man, he’s not gonna think twice about it.’ I don’t think he crosses the line, but it motivates him, it gets him going, it gets his blood boiling.”

When someone pointed out during player interviews on Wednesday that Purdue was the only other Big Ten team still standing, Dickinson said: “This season was definitely like not the best, not the way that we wanted it to. Other fans definitely let us know that, particularly Michigan State, Illinois [turning to his teammates] … who else? Ohio State. Who else? There was another team in there. There was another team. Who was it? Who was the other team? There was one more. Oh, oh, the team down in Madison, the red and white team, they definitely let us know how they felt about our season. We heard those NIT chants. They were hurtful. They definitely hurt.

“But it’s funny how they’ll be watching us on Thursday back in their cribs.”

Nobody, of course, loves Goliath.

“He used to get the crap beat out of him, man,” Jones said. “Just referees would allow people to maybe be a little bit more physical with Hunter than Hunter was allowed to be physical with them. And that was always sooo frustrating with him. His ability to handle that has always been impressive to me. He scored 40, which for DeMatha was a lot, in a game his senior year, hitting six 3s in the game, something that he was extremely proud of when he did it.”

Dickinson will be a matchup problem for Villanova coach Jay Wright, who recruited him.

“He hates to lose,” Jones said. “He’s one of those guys that you like it when you’re his teammate because he’s normal. … He’s not so intense that you can’t joke around with him, but when it’s time to lace ’em up and get serious, he does that. But he’s also the guy that you want to hang out with once you’re off the court, and in the locker room, and on the bus and airports and hotels and everything.”

Moore is much less outgoing, but no less driven.

“One of the most intense competitors I’ve ever coached,” Jones said. “Really quiet. Never said much of anything, but if you ever talked trash to him or kind of got under his skin, you were in for a long night. Championship games, games where maybe things weren’t going our way, he was always the guy that stepped up for it, and he did that plenty of times.”

“He was one of those guys that you knew if he was on your side you had a chance.”

Jones offers an example.

“We played in the Beachball Classic his junior year, we wound up losing to Montverde in the semifinals of it, but the round before that we played Imhotep from Philly,” Jones recalled. “One of their guys maybe said something to Justin that kind of got his attention, and Justin might have scored 18 or 20 straight points after that. And I can recall their coach yelling at the kid that said something to him: ‘Why did you have to say something?’ Like why did you have to poke him?”

Jones keeps a picture of Moore on his cell phone.

“There’s just a fire in him,” Jones said. “He’s cool around his teammates and everything like that, but he doesn’t say boo. But there’s this quiet intensity. I have a picture of him … the picture’s taken from behind my head, so you can see Justin’s face. And to see the look on Justin’s face as he’s looking me dead in my eyes talking to him, like literally if you didn’t know any better, you could see the fire in his eyes as I’m talking to him. And I believe the circumstances were I was just telling him who he was guarding and he was so locked in. He’s a special kid.”

Moore is an ideal partner for ’Nova point guard Collin Gillespie.

“Justin is a versatile guard that can guard bigger people, but also guard smaller guys,” Jones said. “The way Villanova plays, the opportunity for him to play right away was there for him. But he wasn’t gonna be given anything. His vision for what his career would go like is exactly what’s happened for him. He gets to play on the ball, off the ball, he gets to score it, gets to drive it, gets to pass it, gets to guard. That Villanova culture, the Coach Jay Wright culture I think fit Justin Moore to a tee.”

Michigan coach, and former Fab Five and NBA big man, Juwan Howard fit Dickinson to a tee.

“Hunter chose them because he felt like Coach Howard was gonna be the type of coach that he could learn a tremendous amount from and understood literally what Hunter goes through on a daily basis. Their connection was immediate,” Jones said.

He added: “You got a lot of options for these players that are of their caliber in making the right choices. I don’t think anybody can question the choices those young men made.”

Jones has a third player in the Sweet 16 — 6-10 Josh Carlton, who transferred from UConn, will be trying to lead Houston past Arizona in the other South Regional.

“It sucks that they’re all in the same region,” Jones said. “Hopefully out of the three of them, one of them can make it to the Final Four.

“Just so proud. I know how hard these guys have worked, they’ve always played on winning teams, so I’m not surprised at all that they’re in this position.”