Andy Greer couldn’t be any happier that Stephen Jones is back with the NIU men’s basketball team.

The senior guard led the Huskies with a career-high 16 points and tied a career-high in rebounds with 14 as NIU defeated Toledo 69-67 at Chick Evans Field House on Saturday.

The Rockets were the first-place team in the Mid-American Conference West Division heading into Saturday’s game and at one time were the No. 1 team in the RPI standings.

With Jones in the line-up, the Huskies are a different team. The guard is able to create scoring chances for other players thanks to his slashing abilities.

“He did a good job out there,” said Toledo coach Stan Joplin. “He kicked our butt out there. He’s obviously a big plus for them.” Jones was out for the first semester because he was academically ineligible. He was cleared to play against Ball State Jan. 15. Since his return, NIU has gone 2-1. Before his return, the Huskies went 2-10.

NIU interim coach Andy Greer said after the Eastern Michigan game Wednesday it would take a couple of games before Jones would reach his full potential. But after the performance Jones put together against Toledo, he might be reaching it sooner.

“Steve Jones adds a lot to this program,” Greer said. “We all have a lot of confidence in him. I am happy for Steve. People talk about how athletes struggle, but he did a great job academically this semester and put him in the position to play. I am proud for him and glad that he can finally play.”

Toledo had the chance to put the game into overtime, but Greg Stempin missed a tip-in with two seconds remaining.

The Huskies had a 68-57 lead with 1:35 remaining in the game, but the Rockets went on a 10-0 run to pull within 1. Senior guard Mike Brown made a free throw to give NIU the 69-67 lead.

With three seconds left, Toledo had three chances to either tie or win the game.

The Stempin miss typified the day for the Rockets: They had the game in their grasp but weren’t able to get a handle on it.

“It was a great win for us,” Greer said. “The one thing for us is that we always play well against Toledo. We lost three games that were nailbiters. We match up well against them. We knew we weren’t going to blow Toledo out. They were going to make runs. I thought the key to this game was to see how well we were going to respond to their runs. It is a game of runs, and we did a nice job of stopping their runs.”