Penn State Basketball: Landing Curtis Jones creates a positive impact for Lions

Oklahoma State grad transfer guard Curtis Jones announced his decision to commit to Penn State Tuesday morning.

It was a bumpy start to the offseason for Penn State basketball following freshman guard Rasir Bolton’s transfer to Iowa St., as well as the decommitments of two recruits, Justin McKoy and Mikeal Brown-Jones. However, they’ve recovered nicely over the last two weeks. First came junior forward Lamar Stevens’ withdrawal from the NBA Draft in order to return to school. Then on Tuesday, the Nittany Lions landed Oklahoma State grad transfer guard Curtis Jones.

Jones, a 6’4″ combo-guard, averaged 8.1 points-per-game in 21.9 minutes-per-game during his one season for Oklahoma State. Spending his first two college basketball seasons at Indiana, Curtis Jones is familiar with Big Ten basketball. He averaged 3.4 PPG in only 11.3 minutes-per-game during his career with the Hoosiers.

With the loss of Josh Reaves and Rasir Bolton, Curtis Jones will provide Penn State some much-needed guard depth. He’ll join junior Jamari Wheeler, sophomore Myreon Jones, and redshirt sophomore Izaiah Brockington in the Penn State backcourt. Brockington is a St. Bonaventure transfer, who had to sit out all of last season due to NCAA transfer rules. He will be on the floor for the Nittany Lions this season.

How does Jones impact the Lions?

https://twitter.com/ctj_curt/status/1138461795742638080

Curtis Jones will likely come off the bench for Penn State, as he did in his previous three college seasons. While he only shot 33.9-percent from the field for Oklahoma State last season, Jones was able to shoot 32.5-percent from three-point range. This should be a help to Penn State, as they tied for 253rd in the nation in three-pointers made per game at 6.9.

For Pat Chambers and company, Curtis Jones is a low-risk, high reward transfer. Jones was a four-star recruit, and the 85th-ranked player in the Class of 2016, according to 247Sports’ composite rankings. He was the 71st-ranked player on the 2016 Top-247 rankings.

Ironically that’s higher than Lamar Stevens on both lists and higher than former Penn State point guard Tony Carr on the Top-247 list. The upside and talent are clearly there, despite his recent struggles over the course of the past three seasons.

Bench scoring has been a significant weakness of Penn State’s over the past three years, so if Curtis Jones can bring a scoring spark and three-point shooting off the bench, the Nittany Lions will be in a much better position than they were before.