Marquette announced the addition of guards Kameron Jones and Stevie Mitchell for the 2021-22 season Nov. 11 — National Signing Day.
Jones, a Cordova, Tennessee native, averaged 20.4 points per game at Evangelical Christian High School during the 2019-20 season. He helped lead his team to the Division 2-A semifinals and was named the program’s most valuable player.
“We got to know Kam through our team camp and he’s a guy that really piqued our interest because he’s just such a creative scorer,” men’s basketball head coach Steve Wojciechowski said in a press conference over Zoom Nov. 11. “He’s got the total package offensively … and he’s also … an underrated passer.”
Mitchell also saw his fair share of success in high school prior to signing with the Golden Eagles.
At Wilson High School in Reading, Pennsylvania, Mitchell averaged 22.3 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.6 steals per game as a junior and helped his team to a 28-1 overall record. Through three years of play, the nationally ranked recruit, who was ranked 91st in the country by ESPN, is the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,496 points.
“In Stevie Mitchell you have a high-level elite guard who can really do it all on the court,” Wojciechowski said in the Nov. 11 press conference. “He’s a fantastic kid, high basketball IQ, tremendous character and I think he’s one of the top guards in the country.”
At 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-2 respectively, Jones and Mitchell will also add more height to a lengthy backcourt that will feature sophomore Symir Torrence and newly acquired Ohio State sophomore transfer D.J. Carton, who both stand over six feet. The two will also help fill the void that redshirt senior Koby McEwen will leave following his expected departure next season.
“We try to recruit the best players that are available to us, and those guys come in all different shapes and sizes,” Wojciechowski said. “Obviously having guards with size, like we do now, there’s some real advantages to that, and … hopefully that will play out as we play games this year and then in the future with Kam and Stevie.”
Wojciechowski also said there are some advantages to signing smaller guards such as Markus Howard and Andrew Rowsey, but he does like having the size in the backcourt that the team has right now.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic making the recruiting process more difficult, Wojciechowski said his coaching staff was still able to find players that would fit in nicely with the program even though watching them in person was sometimes not even an option.
“I wanna credit my staff for doing a great job. Obviously with recruiting, and COVID, there’s been some challenges and we’ve had to figure out new ways to do it because our old ways — we just weren’t allowed to do it that way,” Wojciechowski said in the Nov. 11 press conference. “I thought my staff, both the assistant coaches and our support staff, did a great job of continuing to find ways to create an environment where we got to show our best … and they deserve a lot of credit for this.”
Jones and Mitchell will arrive on campus next summer and have four years of eligibility with the program.
“We’re extremely excited about both those kids, needless to say,” Wojciechowski said. “Both of them can impact the game in a lot of different ways, and most importantly, they’re unbelievable kids from great families and so we’re tremendously excited about them officially becoming members of the Marquette family.”
This story was written by Nick Galle. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @thenickgalle.
