Marial Shayok is what we would call a late bloomer.

The Sixers took the Iowa State shooting guard with pick #54 overall last night, and he’s really a unique prospect when you dig in a little bit.

I watched him drop 18 points on my squad this past year as a Cyclone, a head-scratcher of an experience since this was the same player who only had a bit part role in previous WVU games while playing for the Virginia Cavaliers. Shayok played three seasons in Charlottesville before transferring to Ames, where he showed off a smooth shot and finished #2 on the Big 12 scoring charts during his senior season. He was named first team all-conference.

The improvement really is drastic. Shayok increased his PPG nearly 10 points during his senior season after sitting out the 2017-2018 campaign, after the jump:

He went from 20 minutes per game as a UVA junior to 33 MPG at ISU. He took 5.6 more shot attempts per game and upped his PPG by 9.2 while shooting 5 percentage points better from the field and nearly 6 percentage points better from three. That’s really something else.

Shayok seemed a bit one-dimensional from the games I watched him play. He could definitely fill it up, and he’s got nice length to complement a 6’6″, 195 pound body, but beyond his scoring ability I think most scouts would tell you that there’s not much else that really jumps off the page.

Defensively he’s not the quickest guy, which might result in him having trouble keeping up with NBA players. He’s also 25 years old and doesn’t project much upside at this point in his career, obviously, but you do see the leaps and bounds he grew as a pure scorer during the one season he played at ISU.

But he’s an intriguing guy, a bigger guard with experience who should be able to score at the next level. He makes a lot of sense as a two-way player for the Sixers and Blue Coats this season.

Here he is putting 24 points on Kansas: