As we’ve already talked about in the 2025-26 Marquette men’s basketball season preview series, there’s a lot of questions facing the Golden Eagles heading into the year. It’s reasonable to say that there’s more questions facing Marquette than any other season that head coach Shaka Smart has been in charge of so far, and yeah, I’m including his first year there. Having Justin Lewis stick around and seeing Smart bring in Darryl Morsell and Kur Kuath went a long way towards pointing us in a direction
to the start of the year. If it’s the most question filled preseason for Smart, then it’s the first question filled preseason for Marquette in a very long time.
With that in mind, I want to bring back a thing that I used to do, and it’s a really simple idea. We’re just going to look at the three primary statistical categories that help dictate how a team is performing — points, rebounds, and assists — and just ask the question: Who’s going to lead Marquette this season?
And so, fresh off Sean Jones’ Player Preview on Wednesday, let’s start with one that he factors into very heavily…..
Who’s going to lead Marquette in assists this season?
Candidate #1: Sean Jones
Well, we said we started here because we just talked about Sean Jones’ potential for this season on Wednesday, so obviously we should start with his candidacy here. He’s the most likely answer, it would seem. He has the most experience on the roster in terms of listening to Shaka Smart’s directions on offense. Same goes for on the defensive end, and that’s how you earn your playing time in this program. If he’s going to be the playing time leader at the point guard position, then that would make him the odds on favorite to be the assists leader.
I don’t think we could/should take anything away from the fact that Jones is averaging just 1.4 assists per game in his first 49 collegiate games. That’s at only 13.5 minutes per game, and if you blow his stats out, her per-40 minutes average is 4.0 for his career and 4.9 for the 16 games he played in 2023-24. Those are perfectly healthy backup point guard numbers, and if Jones gets more regular and consistent playing time as the starting point guard, then those assist averages are going to go shooting up.
Candidate #2: Nigel James
The general sense of this season and this roster is that if Sean Jones’ knee isn’t back to 100% health or if Jones just isn’t working out at point guard or if head coach Shaka Smart and his staff figure out how to get Jones and Nigel James on the court at the same time, then James has a chance to make a decent to good sized impact on this team. That impact is going to come by way of the point guard position. All due respect to the young man, but at a listed six feet tall, he’s not playing anywhere else on the court and being successful at it.
So, if you have too many questions about whether or not Sean Jones can get it done, then Nigel James is your guy here.
Probably.
Why probably? Because sometimes freshmen take a second to hop over that wall and figure out what the heck is going on in Division 1 men’s college basketball. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing ever if it takes James to figure himself and his game out at this level. That leads us to Exhibit A in that departmen….
Candidate #3: Tre Norman
Yeah, I know there’s nothing in Tre Norman’s 68 career games with Marquette totaling 610 minutes of playing time that makes you say “yep, he’s got this figured out.” If anything, the fact that we saw less of Norman — 304 minutes vs 306 in the same number of games played — as a sophomore when Marquette did not have an overstock of guards, specifically ball handling guards, tells you that it’s officially time to be concerned that this just isn’t going to work out for either side of the equation.
However, to steal a turn of a phrase from Stanley Tucci in The Core (perhaps my favorite absolutely terrible movie of all time): What if he could?
What if the light has gone on for the former top 100 prospect? What if he cleared some sort of development hurdle in the summer? What if Marquette isn’t getting what they need from Sean Jones or Nigel James at the same time that Tre Norman figures it out?
Is that an official projection or prediction for this season? No, it’s not, but it’s also not outside the realm of possibilities in this question-laden preseason.
Candidate #4: Chase Ross
Last year, we watched Kam Jones go from star guard to All-American point/lead guard. With that in mind, would it be that weird if the coaching staff turned to Chase Ross and said, “Hey, guess what, buddy?”
All I’m saying is that in his first year as a full time starter, Chase Ross averaged 2.1 assists per game when he wasn’t the primary distributor. His per-40 minutes assist average went from 1.8 as a freshman to 1.2 as a sophomore to 2.8 as a junior. It was a career best assist rate for him according to KenPom.com, coming in at 12.1% after never cracking 8% in his first two seasons.
Would I like to pin the entire success of the season to “Chase Ross is the best passer on this team” or something to that effect? No, I would not, but Marquette needs a solution at point guard for this season, and going into it, they don’t have anyone that’s a proven commodity that we can trust. We can’t rule out the possible impact of a senior who knows how things are supposed to work.
Is it someone else? Do you have a theory? Vote in the poll and sound off in the comments as needed…..
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