Temple lands Jamal Mashburn Jr., son of the former NBA star, in the transfer portal
Mashburn was a two-time all-conference selection at New Mexico.
Temple men’s basketball coach Adam Fisher got a little creative late Monday morning. NCAA rules forbid coaches from talking publicly about unsigned athletes, but GIFs? They’re free game.
Fisher posted a GIF on X of Ken Griffey Jr. hitting a baseball. The key was in the suffix.
The Owls landed a commitment from New Mexico transfer Jamal Mashburn Jr., the son of the former NBA All-Star announced Monday afternoon.
Mashburn, a 6-foot-2 guard, has one year of eligibility remaining. He played his freshman season at Minnesota and then followed coach Richard Pitino Jr. to New Mexico, where he was a three-time all-conference selection in the Mountain West.
Mashburn posted 14.1 points per game and shot 31.7% from three-point range while helping lead New Mexico to the NCAA Tournament in 2023-24. Those numbers were a decline from his sophomore and junior seasons, when Mashburn averaged 18.2 and 19.1 points and shot 34.2% and 38.2% from beyond the arc, respectively. Mashburn’s scoring average in his junior season was tied for the first in the Mountain West.
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Mashburn’s commitment is a big one for Fisher and the Temple staff. The Owls struggled for much of Fisher’s first season, in part because it was a nearly entirely new team built via the transfer portal. But Temple made a surprising run to the championship game of the American Athletic Conference, and that run helped swing some momentum in raising money for the TUFF Fund, the name, image, and likeness collective. That momentum helped contribute to enticing a player like Mashburn to commit.
Temple is losing a few of its own players via the portal, including point guard Hysier Miller, the team’s leading scorer, and second-leading scorer Jordan Riley.
Mashburn’s commitment is a good starting point for Fisher as he continues to build the Owls’ 2024-25 roster in the portal. The Rivals website ranked Mashburn 103rd out of the more than 1,700 players who were in the portal as of Monday morning.