If you ask Michigan coach Dusty May about graduate guard Rubin Jones, he’ll probably talk about the “invisible plays.”
The help-side defense, clogging passing lanes, the last pass before an assist. These plays are clearly important to a winning team but don’t show up on the stat sheet. For most of the season, that’s where Jones has left his mark.
On Tuesday against Purdue, Jones made a lot of those invisible plays. But he made two very visible ones, too.
The first of those plays came with Michigan down a point with three minutes left. Jones ripped the ball free from Boilermakers forward Caleb Furst, sprinting coast-to-coast before finishing with a Euro step to retake the lead.
The second play all but sealed the win for the Wolverines, their first over a top-10 team in three years. With 40 seconds remaining and a four-point lead, junior forward Danny Wolf drove, fought through a defender, and laid it up, only for the ball to bounce off the right side of the rim. There, Jones came flying in through multiple defenders, leaping up for a putback slam.
Jones ran off with an energized yell, sprinting to halfcourt as the Boilermakers called timeout. His teammates soon joined him there, hyping him up as the Crisler Center crowd erupted. It was a breakout moment for Jones during his breakout game in the biggest game of Michigan’s season to date.
“Energy,” Jones responded when asked what he was feeling on his dunk. “The last one, I was so tired that I couldn’t even think right. But everyone else’s energy just picked me back up, I was good.”
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