NCAA Basketball: 6 stars of mid-major backcourts for 2019-20 season
Jermaine Marrow – Hampton Pirates
The Hampton Pirates moved to the Big South Conference last season, and despite finishing 9-7 in the conference, it was only good enough for 8th in a conference that saw the top eight teams separated by just three games. With Chris Clemons having graduated, Hampton returns a senior guard who could be a frontrunner for conference player of the year, Jermaine Marrow.
Like many successful players at the collegiate level, Marrow has improved each of his first three seasons, going from 15.6 points, three rebounds and three assists to last season where he finished for with 24.4 points (his 25.3 regular-season average was 4th best in the country), 4.1 rebounds and 4.9 assists. Those numbers led head coach Edward Joyner and his Pirates to the semifinals of the CIT where they came within a bucket of beating Marshall and making the final.
Where Marrow has worked the hardest over his career is on his perimeter game. He has always had a propensity to shoot the long ball, having hoisted at least 140 in each of his first three seasons, but over his first two years, he made just 29% of them. Last season his three-point numbers improved greatly as he made more last season (88) than he had over his previous two (84), causing his percentage to jump up to 37% as a junior.
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Marrow is a volume shooter, hoisting up more than 100 more shots than the next highest Pirate last season, that volume isn’t likely to go down and neither are the numbers for this Big South star in his senior season.