By Ken Cross
Marquette guard Kam Jones won Big East Player of the Week for November 10-16 as he scored 28 points and pulled down 12 rebounds to lead the Golden Eagles past Maryland, 78-74. He stylized the Marquette system where he made 100 and 95 three-point shots in the last two seasons, making him a key catalyst of Coach Shaka Smart’s offense.
In Wednesday evening’s 76-58 domination of No. 6 Purdue, Jones took his game to an even higher level as he recorded a triple-double of 17 points, 13 rebounds, and 10 assists.
“He’s worked his tail off and there was a guy that came before him who was a pretty good point guard that set records for the amount of load that he accumulated over the course of a week,” Smart said.
Smart also explained how Jones’ role is different this season.
When guys go in the gym, they do extra work, they have a little little chip on and you can get a report at the end of the week how much load they accumulated,” explained Smart. “Tyler’s (Kolek) was like through the roof and we would have so much concern that he was overdoing it. Kam is right there with how he is working.”
Jones became the first Golden Eagle to fashion the triple-double since 2002 when Dwayne Wade accomplished the feat in a win over Kentucky.
“It’s a huge testament to my teammates in trusting me to be one of the main leaders of this team,” said Ward. “Everybody was huge for us tonight as those guys came off the bench and left a spark for Stu and Chase coming off the bench and left a spark for us on (Fletcher) Loyer and (Braden) Smith. It was huge for us. Everybody was huge tonight.”
Marquette had three starters play for over 35 minutes as Jones and Stevie Mitchell were matchup issues for the Boilermakers. Mitchell led all scorers with 21 points as he and Jones contributed 38 of the 76 points. Jones gave Marquette a 23-18 lead when he made his first field goal with 6:10 left in the first half.
“He has always had better ability as a playmaker than people might think, but his role was a little bit different as we had Tyler and those guys were such good passers and distributors and we needed him to think ‘score, score, score…'” commented Smart. “We still need him to score but he has the ball in his hands and we need him to create for the other guys.”
Jones scored 12 of those 17 points in the second half as he scored on a pair of layups which allowed the Golden Eagles push their lead to 46-37 with 15:19 remaining in the game. He scored six in a row in a 1:37 span as Marquette controlled Purdue, 69-53 with 1:59 to play.
“The guy is a savant,” noted Smart. “The only player who can stop Kam, is Kam if he gets out of the moment or gets tired. It’s hard to guard him.”