Eshaunte Jones still can't believe it, can't shake the shock and sadness and senselessness. He is an up-and-coming freshman guard at Nebraska with a bright career in front of him and yet this former North Side standout still wonders why.

Jeron Lewis is gone. A friend and former North Side teammate, a powerful power forward for the University of Southern Indiana, is dead from an apparent heart condition, and weeks later Jones still struggles to understand.

“I had gone home for a few days and I saw him,” Jones said. “He seemed fine. We talked and everything. We hung out. It was cool. All of a sudden — boom! It happened. That hit hard. It's a tough pill to swallow.”

School and basketball commitments kept Jones from the funeral and that hit hard, too.

“We grew up together,” Jones said. “It's one of the roughest things that's ever happened to me.”

Jones spoke by phone a few minutes before the start of practice recently. A high-plains winter had socked the Lincoln campus like nothing he'd seen in Fort Wayne.

“It's a different type of cold out here,” he said. “You get the wind and snow at the same time. It's ridiculous.”

Jones has become a key member of Nebraska's youthful squad that is learning firsthand the rugged nature of Big 12 basketball. The Cornhuskers opened 12-7 overall, 0-4 in the conference.

Jones comes off the bench to average 7.1 points. His 45.5 percent three-point shooting (30-for-66) leads the Big 12. He has 23 assists against 10 turnovers, impressive for a shooting guard. But he understands those numbers won't get him into the starting lineup.

Defense will.

“We're a defensive team,” Jones said. “That's what Coach's philosophy is on this team.”

That would be coach Doc Sadler, who is pushing to shorten the learning curve for Jones and the other freshmen, and it won't come by the Cornhuskers outscoring Big 12 opponents into submission.

“My role is to help our team win by putting points on the board and get better on defense,” Jones said. “The most challenging thing is learning the speed of the college game. It's so much faster compared to high school and prep school. You have to be on top of everything.”

Jones' instant-offense game peaked when he drilled five three-pointers in a loss to Brigham Young during a December Las Vegas tourney. He finished with 21 points.

“I came off the bench and hit three threes in a row,” he said. “After that I kept hitting shots. I was shooting very well.”

Jones could always shoot. At North Side he averaged 28 points as a senior and finished with 1,759 career points. He was the News-Sentinel player of the year. That scoring prowess captured the eye of then-Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson. Jones committed to the Hoosiers, then de-committed in the wake of Sampson's departure amidst NCAA recruiting violations. Jones committed to Oregon State, then de-committed when that program changed coaches.

“It's a tough thing when you make a commitment to a coach and then at the end he's not there,” Jones said. He attended Hargrave Military Academy in Virginia for a year before settling on Nebraska.

“Nebraska was a school that needed a guard,” Jones said. “It's in the Big 12, a good league, one of the best leagues in the country.”

The Big 12 includes No. 2 Kansas, No. 6 Texas, No. 11 Kansas State and No. 24 Baylor. Kansas and Texas were ranked No. 1 earlier in the season. Jones got one of his two starts against Kansas. Nebraska lost 84-72 at home. Jones had 12 points and three rebounds in 32 minutes.

“I just looked at it as another game,” he said. “It was another chance to show what I had and try to help the team get a big win for the university.”

Just getting a Big 12 victory would be big for Nebraska, which has postseason hopes.

“We're just trying to make the (NCAA Tournament),” Jones said. “That's the main focus. I don't care if I score zero points or five points or 30. I just want to win some games and get into the tournament.”