The Ole Miss Hoops Handbook: Jamarion Sharp

OXFORD, Miss. — In today’s installment of “The Ole Miss Hoops Handbook” we take a look at another new face on the team, transfer Jamarion Sharp.

So far, we’ve profiled returnees Matthew Murrell, Jaemyn Brakefield and TJ Caldwell, and then moved to the newcomers, in Auburn transfer Allen Flanigan and St. Peter’s transfer Jaylen Murray.  If you haven’t had the chance, you can click the above links or take a look at those articles here.

Editor’s note: This “Ole Miss Hoops Handbook” series is set to help the Ole Miss community get familiar with these players and help build excitement for the upcoming season. Every day, The Rebel Walk will highlight an individual player to break down his game and describe what you can look forward to and where we can look for more growth this season.

Each player’s breakdown consists of notes from both the summer scouting and re-watch of film this fall. On top of watching game film, I formed an analysis along with a statistical breakdown from several different sources. I have watched multiple games for each player to help give an accurate picture of their game. In an effort to give a more comprehensive view, I tried to watch one game where a player had larger success statistically and one where his impact may have been overlooked by the box score.

Let’s take a look at today’s focus player: Jamarion Sharp

Last year and the offseason

Jamarion Sharp has made a name for himself in the college basketball world over the past two years. At Western Kentucky, Sharp had a larger than life presence on the defensive interior — not only due to his 7-foot-5 height but also because he led the country in blocked shots per game for the past two seasons. Prior to his arrival at Western Kentucky, Sharp spent two seasons playing at John A. Logan College in the junior college ranks.

Over the course of the two years on the hill, Sharp started 60 of 64 total games. His impact and efficiency were massive pluses for the Hilltoppers and he earned back to back honors as the CUSA Defensive Player of the Year. In his first year at Western Kentucky, his 72.6 FG% was good for first in the CUSA and second in the NCAA.

This past season, Sharp averaged 7.4 PTS, 7.7 REB and 4.1 BLK. Some of the notable performances for Sharp this past season include:

@ Lousiana Tech (1/19): 15 PTS | 11 REB | 4 BLK | 6 – 8 FG | 3 – 6 FT

@ Austin Peay (11/30): 18 PTS | 9 REB | 7 BLK | 7-8 FG | 4 – 4 FT

After this past season, Western Kentucky parted ways with head coach Rick Stansbury, so Sharp entered the transfer portal. Sharp had entered after his first season with the Hilltoppers, but ultimately decided to return for a second season there. Ole Miss was able to get Sharp in for a visit to Oxford before landing his commitment on April 27th.

Leading up to this season, Sharp was recently announced as one of the 20 names on the preseason watch list for the 2024 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award. The list was selected by the Naismith Hall of Fame and the award honors the top center in all of college basketball.

The Breakdown

The best way to describe Jamarion Sharp is that he may not do a ton of different things on a basketball court but he’s a near masterclass at the things he does do on a court. Sharp has 99th% height for the position and provides incredibly functional athleticism for a player his size.

Most people’s first thought would be to find some sort of comparison to Tacko Fall since he’s the latest well-known 7-foot-5+ player to play the position and gain notoriety. However, the two are vastly different players and look nothing like each other out on the court.

One of the quotes out there I have read is that Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard would have recruited Sharp even if he were 6-foot-6 instead of 7-foot-5. The reason behind that is Sharp plays the modern man’s game at the Center position with outlier height. To give Sharp an archetype, he plays the game as a rim-running big with good rim protection and elite shot-blocking tendencies.

Sharp’s straight line speed for a center is fascinating. Part of that maintained athleticism is that his growth is similar to that of an Anthony Davis or Hassan Whiteside, where you experience a large growth spurt in a short time frame and you maintain that burst. In-between Sharp’s sophomore and junior year of high school, he grew from 6’5 to 7’0 tall.

When watching film, you can see the effect he has in the transition game where Sharp ranks in the 83rd percentile of all NCAA players. This allows him to try and get easy scoring opportunities purely off beating his opponent down the court but it also allows him to establish position early.

Leading into the next point, Sharp does a really good job of sealing off defenders. Normally he loves to sink into one and wait for a weak side ball reversal and his catch radius is so large it creates a lot of opportunities for him. You can see him throw a hand up to signal his desire for a lob entry a lot on film. He mostly finishes plays off with dunks and converted 65 of 75 dunk attempts last season (86.7%) compared to layups, where he converted 19 of 43 attempts (44.5%).

Lastly on offense, we need to discuss Sharp’s ability as a screener and as a roll man. With his size and a wider base than most anyone else, he can be one of the more effective screeners in college basketball. This will be very fun to see how it sets up other Ole Miss players to score. He also is an effective roll man finishing off lobs and deep rolls at a 63.6% clip. This again is where that catch radius comes into play as he can go get a lot of passes that others can’t. This had him ranked in the 71st percentile.

His touch is growing and we saw him begin to step out and take a couple of mid-range jump shots. He really flocks to that short corner area for these opportunities and shot an impressive 60% on these shots last year.

On offense, he does possess a general 61.7 FG% but that number dipped from 72.6% last season.

Going back to that initial point, Sharp is limited offensively but he’s really special at these few things he does. Nearly a top tier finisher around the rim with dunks, oops, and putbacks.

There are some areas for improvement as he doesn’t look to back players down and doesn’t possess a huge post arsenal. Some of that could be attributed to how WKU used him last year. He only shot 20% on hook shots and 31.3% on post-ups. We could see a bit more tenacity on the offensive glass as well. He finished with an 8.7% rate on the offensive end for rebounding, which isn’t bad (12th in CUSA), but seeing him tip balls out and create second chances would be something to monitor.

Overall, do not let that diminish the other parts of his game on the offensive end because there is so much in Sharp to appreciate on that end.

Now, getting to the defensive side of the ball, Sharp did win back to back conference defensive player of the year awards. He ranks in the 92nd percentile against post-ups and 91st percentile against hook shots, both of which where he limited players to the sub-30% mark. As one may expect, Sharp is a little thin at 235 pounds, and some forwards will look to attack right at him to score through him or force a foul. I would love to see him dig in a little more and be able to not let any chance for separation occur.

Sharp is widely considered one of the better rim protectors in college basketball. Sharp possesses a 17.6% block rate, and he affects so many different shots, whether off of guarding the player himself or helping off weakside. He amassed 279 blocks in two seasons at the Division I level. The reason for this is that with his wingspan and height, his block radius is insane.

To highlight this, a couple of plays stood out to me in his game against Louisville last season. The first is that a 6’8 Louisville player shot a turnaround jumper from the second hash mark (where players line up for free throws) and Sharp’s lower foot was below the lower block and he had so much length to him that he was still able to get up and close that gap to reject the shot. The second instance was a play on the baseline where Sharp’s low foot was half a foot from the paint. The shooter was two steps in from the three point line and Sharp, again, was able to challenge and tip that shot.

The bottom line is that when Sharp gets the chance to, he’s at the very least going to contest any shot within a handful of feet that he can get close to.

A lot of teams may try to lure him out of the paint, using picks to force his hand, but Sharp showed some versatility in his defense there. He was able to step out and sometimes hedge. Other times he could jam the screener further out. Mostly and where he shines the best is in drop coverage. With a pesky on-ball defender, they can relax and work to fight over screens as Sharp’s length can allow him to challenge anything if the attacker chooses to go for a pull-up or attack at the big.

An area for improvement is seeing how he positions himself on attacking players. He struggles to turn his hips, and will have to be smart on how he approaches players who are looking to get downhill.

The last thing I want to mention is his defensive rebounding. He is a really good defensive rebounder and finished in the top five for defensive rebounds in the CUSA in both years. Sharp owns a 20.5 career defensive rebounding percentage. He does a lot of the little things well — rebounding, establishing position, getting a wide box out, and getting vertical for the rebound.

Overall, Ole Miss is getting one very efficient big man in Jamarion Sharp whose presence is quite literally larger than life. An elite shot blocker, Sharp will create a rim protection that Ole Miss fans haven’t seen for quite a few years. On the offensive end, he may not explode for much volume scoring, but consider him reliable to finish any passes that go above the rim or finish some putback dunks with some flavor. He’s going to do a lot of good things for this team on the basketball court and his coverage ability plus block radius will help ease the pressure some off what should be a feisty defensive backcourt.