By AARON BRACY
April 26, 2024
Big5Hoops.com
Jameel Brown is coming home – practically literally.
The Philadelphia native made it official on Monday when he committed to coach Adam Fisher and Temple after spending his first two years at Penn State. The Liacouras Center is less than a mile from his childhood home near 20th and Diamond Streets.
“Being able to go home for my mom’s dinner, just little things that will help me be in a good mental headspace where I can focus on the basketball court and know my family is going to be there to support me is a great feeling, for sure,” Brown told Big5Hoops on Friday afternoon.
Brown starred at The Haverford School and Westtown and joined coach Micah Shrewsberry at Penn State after originally committing to Purdue, where Shrewsberry had recruited him as an assistant coach. He was a freshman on the Nittany Lions’ NCAA tournament team that also featured Fisher as an assistant coach.
“Just being able to be home and be comfortable, knowing the system, knowing Coach Fisher’s system,” Brown said of a key factor in his decision to choose Temple over Tulane. “I see how hard he works and can be successful in his program.”
Brown’s decision caps a program-altering week for Fisher, who earlier received commitments from Jamal Mashburn Jr. (New Mexico) and Lynn Greer III (Saint Joseph’s).
“It’s great,” Fisher told Big5Hoops on Friday. “We’re really excited. Our staff did a great job. Great credit to my whole staff. They were awesome in identifying really good young men, really good basketball players and good fits for what we were looking for.”
A four-star recruit, Brown has had an up-and-down career at Penn State. He averaged 4.0 points last season but 16.0 points per 40 minutes. He showed flashes of excellence, like starting out the season by hitting 8 of 10 3-pointers and scoring 28 points in the Nittany Lions’ first two games in 2023-24. But his minutes were sporadic. He will have an opportunity at Temple to have a much larger role.
“Definitely shotmaking, shotmaking for sure, contested and uncontested,” he said in what he brings to the Owls. “Also the ability to make plays for others as well. I feel like that’s a very underrated part of my game that I haven’t shown yet. I feel like Coach Fish’s offense will allow me to do all of those things.”
Fisher based much of his evaluation on what he saw two seasons ago in practice when Brown competed against talented seniors, like Jalen Pickett, Seth Lundy, Andrew Funk, Myles Dread and current Owls assistant coach Camren Wynter.
“He’s a guy who can really shoot the basketball, can really space the floor, has a really good IQ and he learned from some really good seniors in Funk, Pickett, Lundy, Dread, Wynter,” Fisher said. “He really learned about work ethic and shooting. He would shoot after practice every day. He learned from some great individuals, and I think that will help him tremendously here.
“I evaluated a lot based on my experience with him, that was a big factor. He’s a winner. Everywhere he’s been, he’s won. That’s something we’re really excited about. He did a lot of great things in practice, but there were a lot of older guys ahead of him.”
Fisher believes that Brown, Mashburn and Greer really complement each other well.
“I think Lynn and Mash are really good ball-handlers and come off pick-and-rolls,” he said. “Jameel can also do that, but now it gives us guy who can space the floor as we’re trying to drive downhill. We want to have great spacing and those three really help you space the court, with the guys who are already in our program still who elected to stay.”
Both Fisher and Brown are excited about what the Liacouras Center might look and sound like next season.
“He’s an amazing young man, comes from a great family,” Fisher said. “I expect a lot more tickets to be used with his family in Philadelphia.”
Said Brown, “The Liacouras Center is going to be rocking coming soon.”
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Aaron Bracy has been covering Philadelphia sports since 1996. His byline regularly appears on Associated Press stories. Big5Hoops.com is his second website dedicated to Philadelphia college basketball. Follow Bracy on X: @Aaron_Bracy and like his Facebook and Instagram pages.