Keenan Marseille, who helped lead Hermon High School to its first state championship in boys basketball last winter, will follow in his father’s footsteps during the next stage of his career in the sport.
The 6-foot-2 guard has accepted a scholarship offer to attend South Suburban College, a junior college in the Chicago suburb of South Holland, Illinois.
The decision first was announced on the Black Bear North Basketball Twitter feed and confirmed Monday by Marseille’s father, Fritz Marseille, a Chicago native and former University of Maine basketball player who from 1989 to 1991 attended South Suburban College where he captained the Bulldogs’ basketball team.
The younger Marseille, who plans to study business/marketing, was meeting with South Suburban College coaches and his new teammates Monday morning, his father said from Illinois.
Keenan Marseille averaged 10.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game in quarterbacking Hermon High School to a 22-0 record and the Class B state championship last winter. He displayed the ability to score when needed for the Hawks but more often focused on igniting the team’s transition offense and using his lanky frame to bother opposing guards on the defensive end.
Coach Mark Reed’s Hermon club finished last season as one of only undefeated boys varsity basketball teams in Maine along with Class A state champion Greely of Cumberland Center.
Marseille was a semifinalist for the state’s Mr. Basketball award as a senior, as well as the Class B North tournament most valuable player and first-team Big East Conference all-star.
South Suburban College has qualified for the National Junior College Athletic Association for the ninth time in head coach John Pigatti’s 12 years with the program, including last year when the Bulldogs finished with a 28-6 record.
South Suburban College also has been ranked in the NJCAA Division II top 10 in every season Pigatti has been at the school.
Marseille, who originally was on track to play prep basketball at The Hyde School in Bath next winter, is one of two players from the state championship Hermon High School team who will move on to play basketball on scholarship during the 2018-19 season.
