Jones’ game-winner a grand celebration
Guard beats cancer, reaches 1,000 points
West Virginia forgot about Andrew Jones. The Mountaineers were so fixated on Courtney Ramey knifing through the paint that they let the only Longhorn who had hit a 3 all afternoon slide down into the right corner unnoticed.
Ramey noticed. And as all five Mountaineers converged on him at the rim, Ramey wiggled through the thicket and fired a flawless chest-level pass to Jones. The 3-pointer caromed hard off iron and down through the polyester net with 1.8 seconds remaining.
“I knew Andrew was in the corner, and I believed in him with all my might to make that shot,” Ramey said Saturday. “When I passed it to him, I knew it was money.”
Exactly three years after a cancer diagnosis upended Jones’ life, he topped 1,000 career points and delivered a game-winning dagger to send No. 4 Texas past No. 14 West Virginia, 72-70, at WVU Coliseum in Morgantown. Jones delivered yet another performance drenched in defiance, putting up 16 points and accounting for all four of Texas’ 3s in 35 exacting minutes
“It just feels great, you know, just to be out here doing things that I love every day,” Jones said. “Being able to play basketball with my friends, my teammates. I just put all the glory to God for allowing me to be in a position to be healthy, alive and being able to play a high-level brand of basketball.”
The Longhorns’ win Saturday afternoon wasn’t all about Jones.
Ramey spent the afternoon charging into the paint and blowing up WVU’s defense, finishing with a game-high 19 points, six assists and five rebounds. Freshman Greg Brown showed his bounce in grabbing14 rebounds and adding 12 points. Senior guard Matt Coleman strung together a few critical buckets during a second-half surge, and sophomore forward Kai Jones galloped his way to10 points and four rebounds.
But those valuable performances were, at least for this one game, footnotes.
The story in Morgantown was Jones, who a few short years ago was reduced to an anguished spectator and a jersey patch symbol, “AJ1.” He has persisted through all that life-shaking turbulence, through agonizing treatments that turned him skeletal and basic basketball workouts that had grown difficult.
Andthe thing is, Jones expected this comeback along. He’d tell anyone who’d listen that a return to the court wasn’t a pipedream, that the cancer wouldn’t devour him, that AJ1 would be more than a sew-on patch.
“One thing that is just so impressive about Andrew is fromthe beginning, after he was diagnosed, he kept saying, ‘I’m gonna come back and play. I’m gonna come back and play,’ ” Texas coach Shaka Smart said. “And I think the rest of us were like, ‘man, we’ll be happy if you can just get back healthy. Forget playing right now.’
“But I think that really helped him from a motivational standpoint to hey, let me do everything I ca within my power to fight to get back healthy so that I can get back on the court. And now he’s just doing what he does. Andrew Jones, I don’t think anyone’s surprised he made that shot.”
Jones’ journey back was grueling, frustrating, punctuated by trips to receive chemotherapy and achieve remission. And a brief, moving nine-minute return to the court during a home game against Eastern Illinois on Nov. 6, 2018, only showed how harsh the cancer had been to the former McDonald’s All-American.
But Jones looked reborn last season in a full return to the court, especially while averaging 17.2 points and 3.0 3s during a five-game winning streak that alleviated some of the pressure on Smart and this program. Described often by the sixth-year coach as the team’s best shot-maker, Jones has finally found his stride this season after a shaky start, averaging 18.8 points, 3.0 3s and 3.0 assists over the past four games.
And Jones wants the rest of the Big 12 to know Texas (10-1, 4-0) is coming. They want a regular-season title, a conference tournament title and more.