City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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In the span of a week, Temple’s 2024-25 outlook got much brighter.

Owls coach Adam Fisher added three via the transfer portal in the last five days, culminating with Friday’s announcement of Philly native Jameel Brown that he’ll be continuing his college career on North Broad after two years at Penn State. 

A 6-foot-4 shooting guard, Brown joins Jamal Mashburn Jr. (New Mexico) and Lynn Greer III (Saint Joseph’s) in signing with Temple this week, forming a trio that should see a ton of minutes in the backcourt this season.

He chose Temple over Tulane, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why he picked one American Athletic Conference program over another.

“Being home, being home,” he said. “And just the comfortability piece with Coach Fisher and my former teammate Cam Wynter, knowing how I could be successful in their system. He runs a lot of offense that I already knew, that I played in my freshman year, so just having that comfortability piece and knowing that I could be successful in this system.”

Brown, who played at the Haverford School for three years before graduating from Westtown School in 2022, played for Fisher as a freshman at Penn State in 2022-23, when Fisher was an assistant coach under Micah Shrewsberry. Brown only played sparingly in 14 games that season; he played a solid bit more as a sophomore, averaging 4.0 ppg in 10.1 mpg, his best outing coming by scoring 20 points in 17 minutes in the season opener against Delaware State. 

Known as a strong outside shooter in high school, he was 29-of-91 (31.9%) from deep last year, and hit just a quarter of his triples in Big Ten play. He’ll be counted on to reverse that trend as a junior and provide another big scoring option on the perimeter. 

“Just being a shot-maker, shot-taker, make reads off ball screens,” he said. “Being an all-around player, not just to be labeled as a shooter, that’s the main thing (Fisher) wants from me.”

The Owls’ rotation is going to look significantly different next year than a year ago thanks to the transfer portal. That’s a situation that’s repeating itself across the country and all over the Big 5, with every program in the city suffering significant departures via the transfer route.

Temple had its three leading scorers hit the portal. Hysier Miller (15.9 ppg) transferred to Virginia Tech, while Jordan Riley (11.9 ppg) and Jahlil White (10.1 ppg) remain in the portal along with several others who were deeper in the rotation.

In the span of a week, Fisher and his staff swung the offseason meter from “pessimistic” to “optimistic,” or at least much closer to that direction. In adding Mashburn Jr., Greer and Brown, the Owls’ coaches brought in three players who have a combined 239 Division I games under their belt, as well as a combined 2,778 points. 

Much of that comes from Mashburn, the son of the former NBA great scoring 1,866 points during his four-year career at Minnesota (2020-21) and New Mexico (2021-24). His best season came two years ago, when he averaged 19.1 ppg on 42.8% from the floor (38.2% from 3-point range); this season was a downturn, as he averaged 14.1 ppg on 36.0% shooting (31.7% from deep).

“I feel like we all have our own distinct playstyles and how we all can mesh with each other,” Brown said. “I definitely talked to [Fisher] how the roster and things would work out and I felt like that was the best spot for me to go.”

Greer, whose father is an all-time Temple great and on Fisher’s staff, committed to Temple earlier in the week. Brown said the two have known each other since early in their high school years, Greer at Roman Catholic, a year ahead of Brown, the two both in the Team Final program.

“I talked to Lynn a lot, he definitely helped me throughout this process as well,” Brown said. “We would talk about trying to team up at Temple. Not really a lot of basketball stuff, just catching up over the years and talking about the difference of the schools that we’ve been going to. [But] we did talk about going to Temple together.”

They’re joining a program that made a surprise run to the American Athletic Conference championship game after finishing 5-13 in league play, nearly winning five games in five days to earn a March Madness bid.A couple starters, Steve Settle III (8.6 ppg) and Matteo Picarelli (7.0 ppg) are back on the roster, along with sixth man Zion Stanford (6.6 ppg) and athletic sophomore Quante Berry (2.6 ppg).

Though many of the pieces will be different, Brown told CoBL that run made a difference in his recruitment. 

“I just feel like we could do something really special, put Temple basketball back on the map, Philadelphia basketball back on the map,” he said. “Last year they got to the championship, just want to take that next step for Temple basketball.”

Brown said he’ll be coming from State College to Philadelphia for the last time next weekend, starting classes at Temple at some point during June.

Fisher and his staff still have three open scholarships, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see them add further portal transfers or an incoming freshman or two before then.