Cullowhee, N.C. – Former Catamount men’s basketball standout Russell Jones Jr., who completed his senior collegiate season at Western Carolina in 2024, becomes the second player from last year’s team to sign an international contract to play professionally. Jones Jr. signed with Union Neuchatel Basket in the Swiss Basketball League, the announcement came through EuroBasket.com late last week.
Jones Jr. joins his childhood friend – and former Catamount teammate Tre Jackson – who signed with Poland’s first-league Miasto Szkla Krosno after working out in a showcase camp in Las Vegas earlier this summer. Jackson, who scored 956 of his 1,273 career points in Cullowhee after transferring from Iowa State, finished his time in the Purple & Gold with 210 career 3-pointers, fifth in the school record books. The sharp-shooter from Colubmia, S.C., made 285 career treys as a collegiate player over five seasons, shooting 37.6 percent from range.
Jones Jr. transferred from Winthrop to Western Carolina ahead of the 2022-23 season. He played in 148 career games with 80 starts between his two stops. Including 702 points scored in a Catamount uniform, the Columbia, S.C., product eclipsed the 1,000-career point threshold in 2023-24 and finished his career with 1,167 points. He posted double-digits 33 times and eclipsed the 20-point plateau eight times. The diminutive floor general recorded 273 career assists and swiped 161 career steals.
As a senior, Jones Jr. averaged a career-best 12.6 points per game to rank 19th in the Southern Conference. He was tied for ninth in the league with 80 made 3-pointers, averaging 2.6 made treys per game to rank eighth in the conference. Among his final season highlights were scoring a season-high 22 points three times and knocking down a career-best six 3-pointers in a win over VMI.
Jones Jr. signed a one-year deal to join the Union Neuchatel Basket club, a team founded in 1959 that became the city’s flagship team in the early 1980s. He is one of two American-born players on the roster and is scheduled to report overseas on Sept. 1. Neuchatel is a postcard town located in western Switzerland near the French border and along the banks of Lake Neuchatel. It’s known to be the center of the Swiss watch industry.
The Swiss Basketball League (SBL) season traditionally commences in late September and runs through late-March, early-April.
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Other Former Catamounts Playing Internationally:
Devin Peterson – 2017 – ETB Miners Essen in Germany
Marc Gosselin – 2019 – Vendee Challans Basket in France
Onno Steger – 2020 – CD Povoa in Portugal
Mason Faulkner – 2022 – Plymouth City Patriots in the United Kingdom
Tre Jackson – 2024 – Miasto Szkla Krosno in Poland
Russell Jones Jr. – 2024 – Union Neuchatel Basket in Switzerland