Can Redford Jones turn into the next Jason Staurovsky? Is there the next Ashlan Davis, Damaris Johnson or Ralph McGill?

Perhaps not, But anything approaching those players’ levels of performance would be worth perhaps a couple of wins in 2016.

Attempting to be the next Staurovsky, the great TU kicker in the 1980’s who played six years in the NFL, is junior kicker Redford Jones. Like Staurovsky, Jones came to TU as a walk-on from Oklahoma. Jones is from Norman, Staurovsky was from Bishop Kelley.

After sharing kickoffs with Preston Soper as a redshirt freshman, Jones won the kicking job over Soper in 2015 and had a solid, if somewhat inconsistent sophomore season, making 17 of 25 field goals (68%) and 58 of 60 extra points.

The 5-foot-10, 174-pound Jones showed from game one what he could do in the clutch in converting on a 39-yard field goal in the closing seconds of regulation against Florida Atlantic to tie a game that Tulsa won. That victory set the tone for the entire season.

It was a nice recovery from missing his first attempt of the season from 26 yards.

Tulsa coach Philip Montgomery is confident Jones can improve on his sophomore season.

“I’m excited about Redford,” said Montgomery. “He’s back being healthy. He really battled an injury from the start of fall camp to the end of the season, and still came in and made some big kicks for us. Obviously, we missed a few of those, too.

“But I’m excited to see what he’s going to do being fully healthy, because he does have a good leg and he’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

Montgomery said Soper will be...

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