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Michigan basketball in contact with Cal State Northridge forward transfer Keonte Jones

clayton-sayfieby:Clayton Sayfie•03/30/25•

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Keonte Jones
CSUN transfer Keonte Jones was a first-team All-Big West standout in 2024-25. (Photo by CSUN Athletics)

Michigan Wolverines basketball has been in contact with Cal State Northridge forward transfer Keonte Jones, according to College Basketball Content. He just took an official visit to USC over the weekend and has also heard from Iowa, West Virginia, Syracuse, Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida State, Nebraska, Kansas State, Mississippi State, Virginia Tech, UCF, New Mexico, Dayton and others.

The 6-foot-6, 192-pounder began his career at the JUCO level with Mineral Area College (2020-22) and Midland College (2022-23), before transferring to CSUN for the last two seasons (2023-25). He reportedly has one extra season of eligibility remaining.

Jones is an unranked transfer portal prospect according to On3’s rankings.

Playing on the wing for the 22-11 CSUN Matadors, Jones averaged 13.1 points, 9 rebounds and 4.1 assists in 30.9 minutes per game, earning first-team All-Big West honors. He led the conference in boards and was third in assists, steals (1.9) and blocks (1.3) per contest in the regular season, a do-it-all forward.

This past season, Jones shot 63.3 percent at the rim and 45.2 percent on other in-the-paint twos. Overall, Jones made 51 percent of his two-point attempts (132-of-259), and showed he can step out and hit some triples even if it’s not his forte, going 11-of-32 (34.4 percent) from long range.

One of Jones’ strengths is getting to the foul line, drawing 5.1 fouls per 40 minutes and making 66.9 percent of his 154 free throw attempts.

In 2023-24, Jones registered 11.4 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.2 assists per clash. He connected on 56.3 percent of his twos (112-of-119) and 32.5 percent of his threes (13-of-40).

Draft analyst Stephen Gillaspie of NoCeilings isn’t overly optimistic on his NBA potential but does like his game.

“Offensively, Keonte loves to pressure the basket and finish at the rim,” Gillespie wrote in February. “He displays the type of athleticism that leads you to believe that he could make it at higher levels of basketball. He can be pretty creative with his finishing angles and has nice body control. He can attack in either direction, and he has some ability to go to either hand.

“The lone, red-shaded area is his three-point frequency. He is pretty spatially aware, and shoots well enough to be respected from the arc. Although he only puts up just over two three-pointers per 100 possessions, he is converting on more than 40 percent of his threes. The thing that doesn’t instill the most amount of confidence is his free throw percentage (career percentage of 65 percent). That said, Jones is over 36% on guarded threes, and is over 46 percent when left open. Even though it’s only three attempts, he has even knocked down over 66 percent off the bounce.

“In terms of ball skill, Jones has some juice there. He can do some prototypical drive-and-dish, some skip passing, and other instances of movement playmaking. Keonte is a better heads-up passer than I assumed coming into the film dive, but he isn’t someone that I would bet on being a lead initiator. His turnover percentage isn’t bad at all—especially for someone that is taking on the role that he has for CSUN.

A Madison, Wisc., native, Jones attended East High School. He was an unranked recruit in the 2020 class, before going the JUCO route.

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