Karl Jones adds size, strength to UNLV frontcourt

By Mike Grimala (contact)

Wednesday, July 13, 2022 | 2 a.m.

With the team’s final remaining scholarship for 2022-23, UNLV head coach Kevin Kruger tabbed Karl Jones, an experienced 6-foot-10 center from the juco ranks. It was an addition that checked off a number of boxes for the Scarlet and Gray.

Jones is big, strong and suitably athletic, and based on watching some of his games last year, he brings a physical element to the frontcourt that none of the team’s other big men really offer. He can really bang people around under the basket.

But there’s a caveat.

The first thing that has to be addressed is Jones’s conditioning. It’s an unusual way to begin one of these breakdowns, but his fitness level was really the first thing that stood out when watching him play last year.

Jones jumped the opening tip for his Southwest CC squad, and within a few minutes he labored just to get up and down the court. Opponents blazed past him in transition to score easy baskets, and during halfcourt possessions Jones regularly bent over to rest his hands on his knees. After turnovers or rebounds he often stayed in place, forcing his team to play 4-on-5 at the other end while he struggled to keep up with the pace of play.

It's very, very noticeable:

In the final play of that clip, Southwest had possession for 12 seconds and Jones never made it past halfcourt.

Now, there could have been extenuating circumstances. If you’re the type who likes to give the benefit of the doubt, Jones could have been working his way back from injury and playing himself into shape. Maybe he got a bad night's sleep before those two games. Whatever the case, he simply has to raise his conditioning level before next season begins or he won’t be able to play more than a minute or two at a time.

Defensively, Jones is stout in the paint. He really wasn’t asked to play in space at all — with his conditioning, there’s no way he could have slid his feet side to side and executed on the perimeter — but when the action came to him under the basket, he did a good job of staying down, tracking the ball and challenging shots.

Jones blocked multiple shots in each of the contests I watched and severely altered several more:

Last season, Jones averaged a staggering 2.8 blocks in just 17.9 minutes per game. Of course, he’d be a more effective rim protector if he could slide from side to side and cover more ground in the lane, but his conditioning pretty much forces him to pick a spot and wait.

Jones’s size really comes into play on missed shots. He is pretty good about finding a man to box out, both on offensive and defensive rebounds, but he mostly relies on power to plow through bodies and secure boards.

He’s willing to work for rebounds, going outside his area to track them down, and he gives multiple efforts:

Jones is a strong rebounder (8.2 per game), but it takes a lot out of him. If Jones is forced to battle and jump more than once for a board, he is apt to start huffing and puffing and take the next few possessions off. It’s such an interesting dichotomy, because he really works hard on the defensive end and on the glass — he just can’t sustain the effort level for long due to subpar fitness.

Jones’s offensive game is built around power dunking. He was bigger than his opponents at the juco level and used that to his advantage, gaining deep position on offense and going straight to the rim with two hands once he received the ball.

He finished at a fairly efficient rate, shooting 63.3% on the year:

His touch around the basket was not exactly feathery — once he gets a foot in the paint he is clearly looking to throw down.

When asked to create his own offense, Jones showed some ability to turn quickly and muscle his way to the rim. If he was able to face up and move his defender out of his path, he exploded to the rim for dunks. If he was forced to post up and work his way to the rim, the results weren’t as good:

Some of his moves are surprisingly quick and forceful, but again, that level of exertion took a lot out of him. Any time Jones had to string together multiple moves and coordinate his footwork, it sapped his energy to the extreme.

That led to a lot of lackluster screening on his part. Setting a pick often requires a big man to hustle out to the perimeter — coaches universally emphasize sprinting into the screen — but Jones cuts that corner, usually getting to the spot too late to even get in the way of the on-ball defender.

With his size and build, Jones is capable of setting some brick-wall screens, but due to his conditioning he was rarely able to get in position in time to set effective picks:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the No. 1 priority for Jones this offseason will be upping his fitness level. There will be times when the Scarlet and Gray will need to shore up their rebounding or throw a big body at a player like Wyoming center Graham Ike, and it would be nice to have a 6-foot-10, 250-pound option like Jones off the bench.

If he’s still carrying a piano on his back like he was last year, it’s hard to envision Jones playing any meaningful minutes. But if he can sustain his energy for a handful of minutes at a time, he can be a useful matchup big man for UNLV. Get him into shape and this will be a 13th scholarship well spent.

Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.