Jones, Primo Sustain Alabama Basketball's Offense in Win Over Mississippi State
Coming off a record-breaking performance behind the three-point line against LSU, Alabama was struggling early in a tightly contested first half against a tough defending Mississippi State team.
When the Alabama offense needed a spark in the 81-73 victory Saturday night, the Crimson Tide turned to Herbert Jones and Joshua Primo.
Jones led the team in scoring against the Bulldogs with 17 points, two points off his season high. He also finished with five rebounds, seven assists, four steals and three blocks.
“I just tried to affect the game in any way I could to get the win," Jones said. "It just so happened I had to try and score as many points as I could.”
The senior wing briefly left the game and went to the locker room after taking a hard fall onto his hip while coming down from a rebound attempt. Even with the brief injury, he still greatly contributed to the team on both ends of the floor, playing a team-high 37 minutes. After the game, Jones said he was a little sore, but felt fine overall.
Jones' biggest offensive outburst of the night came when he scored all eight of his first half points over about a three-minute stretch which included a three-point basket and two breakaway slam dunks that had the limited-capacity crowd at Coleman Coliseum on its feet.
Primo continued his hot shooting from the LSU game where he went 6-8 from deep, and made four out of his five three-point attempts in the first half against Mississippi State. This included threes on back-to-back possessions to give Alabama an early lead.
"I don’t feel any pressure at all honestly with all the weapons we have it’s easy to slide in and contribute," Primo said. "The guys, they give me a lot of confidence to shoot whenever I’m open, so I’m always just ready to shoot."
Even though the freshman guard is the youngest on the team and just turned 18 in December, Alabama head coach Nate Oats said Primo is one of the biggest "gym rats" on the team. According to Oats, Primo has exceeded expectations so far, but still has more room to grow.
"His ceiling’s much higher than what he’s even showing, and we’re just going to keep working, working, working till we get him closer to that ceiling," Oats said.
Primo finished with 16 points and three rebounds. His contributions in the second half were diminished due to foul trouble, but he ended the night with the final basket of the game for the Crimson Tide: an exclamation point slam dunk with the assist from Jones.
Both Jones and Primo will look to continue to be contributing factors to the Alabama offense as the Kentucky Wildcats come to Tuscaloosa on Tuesday night. Jones only played eight minutes in the Tide's 85-65 victory on Jan. 12 against Kentucky because of an injury sustained in that game.
