Senior cornerback Andre Jones has seen a considerable decrease in playing time after starting 13 of 14 games last season. Jones has played in seven of eight games and has 11 tackles and two pass breakups. Last season, Jones was second on the team with 74 tackles and led the team with 52 solo tackles. He had seven pass breakups, second behind Cortney Grixby’s 11.

Jones came to Nebraska as a heralded five-star athlete, according to Rivals.com, which ranked him the No. 4 overall junior college prospect. Before playing at Fresno City Community College, Jones was at Kentucky, where he played three games in 2003 before breaking his leg. He earned a medical hardship, then transferred to Fresno City.

Jones visited Tuesday with the Journal Star’s Brian Rosenthal.

on the Kentucky team. I talk to them all the time. As a matter of fact, me and their quarterback, Andre Woodson, were roommates. We both came in together. Even then he was an unbelievable quarterback. He could’ve possibly been starting then, but the schemes and plays are hard to learn as a freshman. The starting receiver there, Keenan Burton, me and him are like brothers. That’s like my best friend right there. Their starting running back, Tony Dixon, I hosted him on his visit when he came.”

“I still have friends

“I’m real happy for them, because Kentucky has always been known as a basketball school. Just them being able to break the stereotype … they’ve really had a wonderful season. And it started last year. They were kind of getting into a mode a little bit. I was watching them a lot, and they were looking pretty good. Beat Clemson in their bowl game last year. And they beat some important teams in the SEC. They’ve got a tough schedule every game. They meet the challenge every week. After beating LSU … that shocked me. But I always knew they had the talent, it was just a matter of time.”

“Sometimes I do think about it, what if I would’ve stayed there, but everybody has to go a certain route to get a certain success. Success is always under construction. Things might have been that way, things might not have been that way. Everybody has a different route they have to go for success.”

“This year has been pretty tough. I’m been through adversity before. I’ve watched things go wrong. Perfect example was when I was at Kentucky, fell off at school and everything like that, and told I would never play D-one ball again. When things hit the fan and things go wrong, I always know how to deal with it. But the thing is knowing how to fix it, and the only thing we can continue to keep doing is just moving forward, keeping our heads up, no pointing fingers. Everybody has a part in this. Let’s just have fun and let’s just play.”

“There hasn’t been pointing fingers, but we’re down a little bit. You’re going to get down at times like this, you know? You’ve got the fans on you and everything. When you’re not used to being in this situation before, you’re going to be down. That’s a human trait. When it’s a group of us, a team, a family, that’s when you pick each other up. We’re brothers here. When you see a player down, when I see somebody down, I try to always find something positive out of the worst thing, so that they can look more to the positive than the negative.”

“It’s been disappointing not playing as much this year, but I try not to let that get to me. I always ask myself, ‘How can I get better today?’ It starts with motivating guys on our team. I try to motivate Armando, Zack, Cortney, so that I’m still in the game. I don’t want to be over there on the sideline feeling bad for myself and everything, and then my number be called, and I’m not ready to play. I try to always keep myself in the game, so if my number’s called, I can go make something happen. This team trusts me that I can be out there at that moment. I would like to see more playing time, but I trust what my coaches’ decisions are. Just roll with it.”