Rick Pitino has found his replacement for Peyton Siva as point guard Chris Jones, the No. 1 JuCo player in the country, has committed to play basketball at Louisville.

After receiving an in-house visit from Pitino two Sundays ago, Jones took an official visit to U of L over the weekend and left impressed enough to go ahead pull the trigger on a verbal commitment.

Jones, who played high school ball with Kevin Ware, is an up-tempo floor general who should fit perfectly into Pitino's system. It's one of the reasons the Cardinal head coach had made Jones such a priority in recent weeks.

"He feels more comfortable putting the ball in my hand than a high school point guard, and that's why he's not recruiting any more high school point guards," Jones recently said of Pitino. "I'm their top priority, and that's the reason why."

It won't take long for talk amongst Cardinal fans to turn to the topic of what this means for Terry Rozier. Rozier was originally the only member of Louisville's class of 2012, but he's spending this season at Hargrave Military Academy after being unable to qualify academically.

There were concerns about Rozier's ability to play the point at the next level. There aren't about Jones', and that's why this is such a huge commitment. He'll take the reins from Siva in a year, and then compete with freshman Quentin Snider for the spot the year after that.

This is very good news.



