Jones commits to Washington over UK

Terrence Jones, a top 20 national prospect and a seemingly ideal player to replace the departed Patrick Patterson at Kentucky, committed to Washington on Friday. He picked the Huskies over Kentucky, Oklahoma, Oregon, UCLA and Kansas.

“I wanted to be close to home,” Jones said in an announcement made at his Portland, Ore., high school.

Jones also noted that one of his high school teammates, Terrence Ross, had earlier committed to Washington.

“Like I said since the eighth grade, I wanted to play with Terrence Ross,” Jones said.

Having lost star freshmen John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins as well as Patterson to this year’s NBA Draft, Kentucky had already got commitments from big man Enes Kanter and highly-regarded point guard Brandon Knight. The Cats also got commitments from wings Doron Lamb and Stacey Poole, Jr.

Several analysts put Jones’ announcement in the context of UK Coach John Calipari’s eye-opening streak of recruiting good fortune having to end sometime.
“Not everything is going to go according to plan every year,” Dave Telep of Scout.com said. “There are other people recruiting guys.”
Clark Francis of the Hoop Scoop echoed that sentiment in assessing the loss of C.J. Leslie to North Carolina State and then Jones in the last week.
“You’ve gotten everybody you were supposed to get,” he said of Kentucky’s recruiting haul since Calipari became coach. “The law of averages catches up to you at some point.  Every beautiful girl you want to go out with isn’t going to go out with you.
“The more important question is what’s Plan B.”
Kentucky had no realistic hope of adding a player similar to Jones this recruiting year, the analysts said.
“Maybe Kentucky would go with a smaller lineup with (Enes) Kanter,” Francis said.
But even without Jones, Kentucky would be a capable team next season, said Brick Oettinger, a recruiting analyst for Prep Stars.
“It’s not like it would be a team lacking in talent,” he said. “You don’t have the obvious replacement for (Patrick) Patterson. I wouldn’t call it a hole in the lineup. But certainly the lineup would not be as strong as it could have been.”