Two years after his prolific shooting and trash-talking, jersey-popping, renegade attitude made him one of college basketball's most electrifying – and polarizing – players, Marshall Henderson now leads a much more humble professional existence.

In Baghdad, Iraq, of all places.

Henderson plays in the Iraqi Super League. The former Ole Miss star hears gunshots from time to time in the city. He doesn't leave his Baghdad hotel too often, where working electricity can be a daily challenge. And there are rarely female spectators in the stands at his games.

Henderson is about as far away from his NBA dream as possible, and yet he finds himself in a much better place personally while playing in Iraq.

"It's not as bad as people make it seem back home," Henderson told Yahoo Sports in a Skype audio interview last week. "We just chill in the hotel. We don't go anywhere. We could go places and it would be safe. We wouldn't be worried about getting captured or anything. It's definitely better than I would've expected."

View photos Marshall Henderson was playing for Openjobmetis in Italy in October. (Getty Images) More

Two seasons ago, before arriving in the Middle East, Henderson became one of the most colorful characters in college basketball at the University of Mississippi. He scored big, shot deep and talked brash, quickly turning him into one of college basketball's biggest stars – or villains, if you were an opposing fan. The skinny 6-foot-2, 172-pounder averaged 20.1 points per game while making more than a third of his 3-pointers as a junior during the 2012-13 season. With Henderson leading the way, Ole Miss won the 2013 SEC tournament. He then scored 19 points in the Rebels' upset of Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

"He was one of the most clutch players I ever played against," said former Tennessee forward Jarnell Stokes who is now with the Memphis Grizzlies. "He had a fan base everywhere he went."

Henderson, 24, made the most of his sudden rise to stardom. After a victory over Georgia, he famously ended his news conference with just 10 words, implying he had better plans for a Saturday night.

"As a kid you dream that something like that would happen," Henderson said. "But to actually be in it was definitely mind-blowing, especially at a place like Ole Miss, where, if you're an athlete, and you're something on a national level, there is love coming from all over the place. I was able to make contacts in the NBA and even rappers made comments where I was like, 'That's cool.' "

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Henderson was told he could be a second-round pick when he initially entered the 2013 NBA draft. The 2013 SEC tournament MVP eventually decided to return to Ole Miss with hopes that a great senior season would improve his draft prospects.

Henderson, however, had a history of drug and alcohol problems dating back to high school, and those issues returned during the summer of 2013 when he was caught with possession of marijuana and cocaine. Ole Miss suspended him the first three games of the 2013-14 season. Henderson said the season went downhill from there.

"I got a lot of good feedback about being drafted in the second round," Henderson said. "Then I got in trouble that summer and then it seemed like that was the end of [the NBA interest]. There was really nothing after that. I have to live with that."

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