Duke Basketball: Tre Jones is making history every time he is on the court
By Chad Wickham
The leader of this Duke Basketball team is point guard Tre Jones and every time he steps on the floor he is seemingly making history.
Duke basketball freshman Tre Jones continued his great play this past Saturday as the Blue Devils opened their ACC schedule with a blowout victory over Clemson.
Jones tallied 10 points and a season-high nine assists in the win, and had yet another game with zero turnovers — it was Jones’ fifth game of the season where he did not commit a turnover.
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This was the point guard’s fourth game this season in which he recorded 7+ assists and zero turnovers. That ties a Duke record held by Bobby Hurley, Tommy Amaker and Steve Wojchiechowski — and that is a career record, not a season record.
Not bad company to be in.
To put that in perspective, Jones did this in just 13 games while the other three did it over a four-year span. What we are seeing from Jones right now is special.
Jones has rarely turned the ball over this season and on the year has 76 assists compared to just 13 turnovers. The six-foot-two-inch point guard has played 388 total minutes this year, so he’s averaging just one turnover every 29.8 minutes.
Jones also leads the ACC in assist-to-turnover ratio at 5.85.
A great decision-maker running the team is something Duke has missed since 2015, when Tre’s brother, Tyus, was at the helm of the Duke offense, so this is a great sight to see.
To go along with his passing ability and decision-making with the ball, Jones has arguably been the best defensive player in the country and is a big reason why the Blue Devils have the second best defensive rating in the country, according to Kenpom.
If you watched closely before the Zion Williamson 360 dunk Saturday night, you would have seen Jones putting a ton of pressure on the Clemson point guard, which forced him to spin and allowed Williamson to sneak in and get the steal and the breakaway dunk.
With Jones leading the defense, over Duke’s last 541 defensive possessions, opponents have scored just 185 times and turned the ball over 153 times, according to Ben Swain of WRAL Sports.
In the last 541 possessions against Duke, opponents have scored 185 times and turned it over 153 times.
— Ben Swain (@TheBenSwain) January 6, 2019
That is an insane stat and it shows the tenacity of Tre Jones on the defensive end of the floor.
Next. Predicting scores for Duke's 18 ACC games. dark
Jones and the Blue Devils next play at Wake Forest on Tuesday at 7 p.m. on ESPN.