Second Chance to Make First Pro Impression

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — OK, so it’s a round about kind of warped (maybe even a little dark) way to look at things, but Myreon Jones is certainly not the first college athlete to get a do-over of late on his senior season. Won’t be the last, either. The NCAA granted an extra year of eligibility to every underclassmen student-athlete affected by the pandemic in the winter and spring of 2020. That free COViD year has been a boon to hundreds over the past two years, with the fifth-year senior Class of ’24 set to be the last. 

Jones is the Class of ’23. After what happened in ’21-22, this is a do-over season. 

“Pretty much, yeah,” the Florida off-guard said earlier this week. 

To backtrack, Jones was a sophomore enjoying a breakout campaign on a Penn State squad that was a lock for the NCAA Tournament when the world shutdown in March of 2020. A sharp-shooter from Birmingham, Ala., Jones had been a spot-duty freshman the year before, but in his second season was playing nearly 29 minutes a game, scoring 13.3 points, hitting 40.3 percent from the 3-point line and dishing three assists per game. The Nittany Lions were 21-10 and sat in fifth place in the Big Ten. 

The program took a step back in ’20-21, but Jones did not. He played more (30.3 minutes per game), scored more (15.3 points) and shot it nearly as well from distance (39.5 percent). The coach, however, was fired, so Jones hit the transfer portal and landed with the Gators. At UF,  his numbers — and confidence — took a nose dive in ’21-22, the coach bolted after a disappointing NIT-bound seasoan and Jones was left to ponder what to make (and what to do?) with his fifth year and his third coach in three seasons. 

After a couple meetings with the new UF coach, Todd Golden, and a couple conversations with his parents, Jones decided the best thing to do was to stick it out with the Gators and do everything in his power to flip his Florida narrative. 

The process is well underway, what with the official start of ’22-23 preseason practice on Tuesday, and the 6-foot-3, 180-pound Jones running the floor, letting fly and dropping some 3-balls as he looks to rediscover the free-flowing, free-minded player who was so good and so respected as a shooter during his days at State College, Pa.    

“He talked about how he wanted me to get back to what I was at Penn State,” Jones said of his initial conversations with Golden last spring. “He didn’t really look at last year. He looked at the numbers at…