Andrew Jones (born December 9, 1997) is an American professional

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

player who currently plays for

SC Rasta Vechta Sports Club Rasta Vechta is a German basketball club based in Vechta, Lower Saxony. The club plays in the ProA, the second tier of professional Basketball in Germany. Founded in 1979, the club spent the majority of its history in the lower-tier ...

in the German ProA. He played

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

for the Texas Longhorns of the

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

Early life and high school career

20160330 MCDAAG Andrew Jones reads the D

Jones was born in

Midland, Texas Midland is a city in and the county seat of Midland County, Texas, United States. A small part of Midland is in Martin County. At the 2020 census, Midland's population was 132,524. It is the principal city of the Midland, Texas metropolitan ...

and moved with his family to

Irving, Texas Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United States Census Bureau, ...

at age seven. When Jones was in second grade, he suffered minor bruises in a car accident near

Sweetwater, Texas Sweetwater is a municipality in and the seat of Nolan County, Texas, United States. It is 123 miles southeast of Lubbock and 40 miles west of Abilene, Texas. Its population was 10,906 at the 2010 census. History The town's name "Sweetwater" is t ...

that left his sister, Alexis, with a broken wrist and his father, David, paralyzed from his chest down. Due to his father's disability, Jones learned to cook and care for his father. He played basketball for MacArthur High School in Irving, where as a senior he averaged 30 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists per game and led his team to a 22–7 record. Jones played in the

McDonald's All-American Game The McDonald's All-American Game is the all-star basketball game played each year for American and Canadian boys' and girls' high school basketball graduates. Consisting of the top players, each team plays a single exhibition game after the concl ...

and Jordan Brand Classic. A four-star

recruit __NOTOC__ Recruit can refer to: Military * Military recruitment * Recruit training, in the military * ''Rekrut'' (English: Recruit), a military recruit or low rank in German-speaking countries * Seaman recruit Books *''Le Réquisitionnaire'' (En ...

, he committed to

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

on December 14, 2015 over

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

, Baylor, Louisville,

Oklahoma State Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New M ...

, and Texas A&M, among others. He credited his commitment to a strong relationship with coach

Shaka Smart Shaka Dingani Smart (born April 8, 1977) is an American men's college basketball coach. He is the current head men's basketball coach at Marquette University. Early life and playing career Smart grew up in Oregon, Wisconsin. In high school, Sm ...

College career

On February 25, 2017, Jones scored a freshman season-high 18 points in a 77–67 loss to third-ranked

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

. As a freshman, he started in 23 games and averaged 11.4 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.2 steals per game. At the end of the season, Jones took part in the NBA Draft Combine and team workouts before ultimately withdrawing from the

2017 NBA draft The 2017 NBA draft was held on June 22, 2017, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. National Basketball Association (NBA) teams took turns selecting U.S. college basketball players and other eligible players, including international players. ...

. On December 5, 2017, as a sophomore, Jones scored a season-high 19 points in a 71–67 win over VCU but left with a right wrist injury in the final minutes. In his next two games, he played limited minutes because he felt tired, prompting Texas to send him for tests. On January 10, 2018, it was announced that Jones was diagnosed for

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

. He was honored by several other schools and received more than $130,000 in donations for his medical expenses from a fundraising website set up by the Texas athletic department. Jones went to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for treatment, and after being released in late February, he finished outpatient treatment in August. While recovering, Jones missed the second half of his sophomore season and was granted medical redshirts for both the 2017–18 and 2018–19 seasons. On October 13, 2018, he suffered a fractured toe in practice, shortly after his return to the team. He returned to action on November 6, scoring one point in nine minutes in a 71–59 victory over

Eastern Illinois Eastern Illinois University is a public university in Charleston, Illinois. Established in 1895 as the Eastern Illinois State Normal School, a teacher's college offering a two-year degree, Eastern Illinois University gradually expanded into a co ...

, one of his two appearances in the season. Jones made his redshirt sophomore season debut on November 5, 2019, scoring a then-career-high 20 points in a 69–45 win over Northern Colorado. He established a new career high on February 19, 2020, after recording 21 points in a 70–56 victory over

TCU TCU may stand for: Education * Tanzania Commission for Universities, regulatory body for Universities in Tanzania * Texas Christian University, a private university in Fort Worth, Texas ** TCU Horned Frogs, the athletic programs of the school * Tok ...

. On March 2, Jones was named

Co-Player of the Week after scoring a career-high 22 points twice in wins over

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

and

Texas Tech Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on , and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the main institution of the five-institution Texas Tech University Sys ...

. By the end of the season, he was averaging 11.5 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game and was named All-Big 12 honorable mention. He reached double figures in scoring 15 times on the season. Jones chose to return for a sixth season in 2021–22 after the NCAA ruled that the 2020–21 season, heavily disrupted by

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, would not be counted against the athletic eligibility of any basketball player. At the end of that season, he was named as one of two recipients of the Perry Wallace Most Courageous Award, presented by the

United States Basketball Writers Association The United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) was founded in 1956 by National Collegiate Athletic Association director Walter Byers to serve the interests of journalists who cover college basketball. Scholarships The USBWA annually awa ...

to one or more individuals associated with men's college basketball who have exhibited extraordinary courage on and off the court. Both Jones and his fellow recipient, Justin Hardy of

NCAA Division III NCAA Division III (D-III) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletic scholarships to their stu ...

Washington (MO), averaged double figures in scoring during the season while battling cancer (with Hardy battling stomach cancer).

Career statistics

College

, - , style="text-align:left;", 2016–17 , style="text-align:left;",

, 33 , , 23 , , 27.9 , , .425 , , .328 , , .775 , , 3.9 , , 3.5 , , 1.2 , , .4 , , 11.4 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2017–18 , style="text-align:left;",

, 10 , , 8 , , 22.6 , , .522 , , .463 , , .733 , , 2.4 , , 2.0 , , .6 , , .2 , , 13.5 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2018–19 , style="text-align:left;",

, 2 , , 0 , , 5.5 , , .000 , , .000 , , .750 , , 1.0 , , .5 , , .5 , , .0 , , 1.5 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2019–20 , style="text-align:left;",

, 31 , , 11 , , 26.5 , , .410 , , .383 , , .722 , , 2.3 , , 1.9 , , .7 , , .2 , , 11.5 , - , style="text-align:left;",

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

, style="text-align:left;",

, 26 , , 26 , , 31.4 , , .404 , , .338 , , .831 , , 4.5 , , 2.3 , , 1.0 , , .1 , , 14.6 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2021–22 , style="text-align:left;",

, 33 , , 20 , , 26.3 , , .413 , , .320 , , .814 , , 2.8 , , 1.6 , , 1.2 , , .2 , , 11.2 , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:center;" colspan="2", Career , 135 , , 88 , , 27.1 , , .419 , , .348 , , .785 , , 3.2 , , 2.3 , , 1.0 , , .2 , , 12.0

Personal life

Jones is a

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

. Jones' older sister, Alexis, plays in the

Women's National Basketball Association The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...

(WNBA). A decorated basketball player at MacArthur High School, she played for

Duke Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...

and Baylor at the collegiate level, before winning a

WNBA championship The WNBA Finals are the championship series of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the conclusion of the league's postseason each fall. The series was named the WNBA Championship until 2002. Starting 2016 Verizon is the officia ...

with the

Minnesota Lynx The Minnesota Lynx are an American professional basketball team based in Minneapolis, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The team won the WNBA title in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. Founded pr ...

. His favorite subject in high school was mathematics, and he said “I like dealing with numbers and money,” adding that it would help him with the business side of basketball.

References

External links

Texas Longhorns bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Andrew 1997 births Living people American men's basketball players Basketball players from Texas McDonald's High School All-Americans People from Midland, Texas Shooting guards Texas Longhorns men's basketball players