NAU’s Jones shares Player of the Week honors
OGDEN, Utah – Northern Arizona’s Cameron Jones and Northern Colorado’s Devon Beitzel have been named the Co-Big Sky Conference men’s basketball players of the Week, the conference office announced.
Both seniors led their teams to road non-conference victories on Sears BracketBusters Saturday. Jones also led Northern Arizona to a conference win over Eastern Washington.
Jones, a 6-foot-4 guard from Los Angeles, Calif., averaged 23 points, six rebounds and 4.5 assists per game as the Lumberjacks beat Eastern Washington 83-74 and topped Cal Poly of the Big West Conference 59-56.
Jones scored 27 points with four assists and tied a career-high with nine rebounds in the win over Eastern Washington. He was 8-of-13 from the floor and 11-of-14 from the 3-point line.
Jones scored a team-high 19 points with five assists and three rebounds in the win over Cal Poly. Jones drained the game-winning 3-pointer with one second remaining.
It was a big milestone game for Jones. He surpassed the 1,500-point mark and 500-point total for the season in the game. He is the fifth player in school history to score 500 or more points in a season and the first to reach the mark twice, while also becoming the fourth player to eclipse the 1,500 point mark in school history. He now has 1,516 points, 34 points shy of the school record held by Kelly Golob, trailing only Andy Hurd (1,522) and Ross Land (1,525) on the scoring list.
Beitzel, a 6-foot-1 guard from Lafayette, Colo., scored 28 points with four rebounds, three assists and a steal in Northern Colorado’s 82-80 victory over New Mexico State of the Western Athletic Conference.
Beitzel hit 9-of-15 shots from the floor, was 3-of-8 from 3-point range, and 7-of-9 from the free-throw line. Beitzel scored 16 points in the first half, hitting 4-of-5 shots from the field and all five of his free throws as Northern Colorado built a 52-43 halftime lead en route to its first non-conference road win of the season.
Jones has won player of the week honors four times in his career. Both players are among the 10 finalists for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award.
