TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — He's tough. He's battle-tested. He's resilient. He's strong.
The adjectives seem harder and harder to find when attempting to describe University of Alabama senior wing Herb Jones and what he means to the Crimson Tide.,
Jones had another epic performance on the hardwood during the Crimson Tide’s record-breaking 115-82 win over Georgia inside Coleman Coliseum on Saturday afternoon.
The Greensboro, Ala. native had been dealing with a nagging back injury since Jan. 23 against Mississippi State and hadn't looked himself since, failing to score in double digits in four straight games.
However, Saturday was a different story.
Jones scored a career-high 21 points on 7-of-9 shooting, 17 of which came in the first 20 minutes, and added five rebounds, four assists and three blocks. He also connected on a career-high three three-pointers.
“It was huge for us,” Alabama sophomore guard Jaden Shackelford said. “It’s good to see Herb getting better with every game. That’s the closest we’ve seen him to 100 percent in the past few games. It’s big for us. He scored the ball well for us tonight and, of course, played defense at an elite level.
“It’s big for us, and we’re happy to see him getting better.”
While the Crimson Tide broke the program record for most points in a game with 115, Alabama coach Nate Oats wasn't too happy with the unit's defensive performance, allowing 82 points. But he was overjoyed with Jones' individual success on that end of the floor.
Jones won his team-high 11th Hard Hat Award of the season following the thrashing of the Bulldogs.
"Herb was a monster on defense tonight," Oats said. "He was all over the place."
Since originally hurting his back last month, Jones has been extremely limited in practice, leading to 'rust' in games according to Oats. Thankfully for the Crimson Tide, that was all shook off on Saturday in a big way as Alabama moved to within two wins away from winning the outright SEC regular-season title.
“It’s the best he’s played since he took the initial fall,” Oats said. "That’s what we kept saying. He has to get the rust out. It’s great to just say let’s sit him, but sitting him doesn’t get him any better. It prevents another hit to it. The only thing that was setting him back was if he had taken a hit to it, and he hasn’t taken a hit for the last 3-4 games, but he did need to get some rust knocked off him for not practicing.
“We just felt like let’s get him back to doing full-speed drills, individual skill drills to just try to get as hard as we can close to game speed without going live in practice and then let’s let him keep playing because if you did sit him, whenever you’d have brought him back, he’d have to play a few games to knock the rust off. It’d be nice if he didn’t have to knock the rust off when he did hit 100 percent, which is what we’re hoping for now.”
The Link LonkFebruary 14, 2021 at 10:30PM
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Herb Jones Delivers Another Epic Performance for Alabama Basketball Against Georgia - Bama Maven
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