2020 G/F Dillon Jones Seeing Big-Time Boost At Sunrise
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - It wasn’t an easy decision and it wasn’t easy in the beginning, but moving from South Carolina to Kansas to attend Sunrise Christian Academy is beginning to pay off for Dillon Jones.
Jones helped his high school squad in South Carolina, Keenan, to a state championship as a junior during the 2018-19 season.
He made the difficult choice to transfer to Sunrise in part to jumpstart his recruitment and the 2020 swingman is starting to see those results.
Jones helped Sunrise blow out Hillcrest Prep 91-48 in the HoopHall Classic here last weekend.
“It’s big,” Jones said of the showcase win. “We’ve been on the cusp of – like our Coach says just rolling the ball down the hill – we’ve been so close. I think we put 32 minutes together so we were able to showcase it on the big stage. We practice really hard.”
Jones only has a pair of “standing offers” at the moment – from UIC and Tennessee Tech – but he’s recently drawn interest from Notre Dame, Tulane, Florida Gulf Coast and Tennessee-Chattanooga,
“It’s all because of God,” the 6-foot-6, 190-pounder said. “Of course I go to a Christian school, so I’ve been staying with God. I’ve put in a lot of work lately. The point of coming to Sunrise, 17 hours away from my house, those moments are true testaments of what I’ve been going through.
“When I first came to Sunrise, I was real low at times. I wasn’t really playing good, but I just stayed with it and kept working. Now that I’m showing it in the second half of the season, I’ve just got to keep playing hard and working and I know everything else will take care of itself.”
Jones said he won’t stop working though.
“It feels good, but I don’t want to feel satisfied,” he said. “I feel like when I was back home in South Carolina, that was my main problem. I think I got satisfied.
“So now that I’m here around great players every day, you’ve got to work. Now that I’m working every day, it feels good, but I can’t stop. I know I can’t stop. There’s so much left for me to do, so I’ve just got to stay with it.”
Jones had the chance to speak with one Irish assistant on the phone after a practice at Sunrise recently.
“He was saying they were interested, that they can’t recruit everybody because of their high academics, but I don’t have any problems with my grades,” he said. “It’s just really getting started, nothing crazy.”
He knows enough about the Irish’s program at this point to believe he could fit.
“They’ve got real high-level shooters,” he said. “I know that I’m a playmaker and every team with shooters needs playmakers, so I think I can definitely fit with them.
“I want to make an impact. I feel like I make a lot of winning plays. I’m not going to run off 50 every game, so I feel like any team that needs a player who can do anything. I can’t go into a program and say, ‘I’m going to be a point guard. I’m going to be a shooting guard, small forward, power forward.’ I feel like I can do whatever a team needs me to do, so that’s the main thing.”
Jones doesn’t know what’s next in his recruitment and understands that time is running out, but he is just going to focus on what he can control.
“I’ve just got to keep working and staying down. That’s what’s helped me get to this point. I know if I just keeps working everything will fall into place. I’m going to let God handle that, I’m just going to keep working every day.”