Hey, remember back at the start of the season? Remember when I posited a series of If statements about the 2025-26 Marquette men’s basketball season
? Imagined possibilities for what it would take for the Golden Eagles to turn in a successful campaign? Not all of them had to work out but several of them had to in order to see head coach Shaka Smart guide his team into the NCAA tournament yet once again?Yeah. So. With Marquette sitting at 5-5 and ticketed for a road trip to Mackey Arena on Saturday
that is likely to result in a loss to Purdue and thus drop the Golden Eagles under .500 after December 1st for the first time since Bill Scholl stuck a stamp on Steve Wojciechowski and mailed him to Utah, it’s time to swing back to those Ifs and see exactly how many of them are misfiring at the moment. It’s probably a lot of them, but actually counting them out seems like a valuable measurement of the season to this point.
I’ll take a moment here to allow y’all to go gather a beverage — your pick on the strength and volume — and maybe a snack.
Okay, let’s take a deep breath and dive in.
- If Chase Ross can stay healthy for a whole season, we could see that leap we’ve been expecting to see since his freshman year.
So far so good on the ticky-tack/relatively minor injury front for Ross. His shooting inside the arc — and for Marquette’s system, that essentially means at the rim — is at a career high, as are his season averages for points, rebounds, assists, and steals. He’s leading the Big East in scoring at 19.5 points per game, and he’d probably be doing a little bit better in the scoring department if he was shooting better than his current 32% from behind the three-point line. Ross is also being asked to take a lot more three-pointers than he has in the past, he’s up to a career high 9.2 per 40 minutes of action after never clearing six per 40 minutes in the past. That probably means he’s taking some shots that he maybe shouldn’t, but that’s the kind of thing you have to ask your top scorer to do.
TL; DR: If he’s not leaping, Chase Ross is at least jumping forward.
- If Sean Jones is all the way back from his knee surgery, I bet Shaka Smart and Nevada Smith can coach him into being a Big East caliber point guard.
Yes, he has missed time with a shoulder issue that has nothing to do with his knee reconstruction and recovery. Ignoring that aspect of it… Jones has not been good in his 87 minutes of action. 28% from the field isn’t getting it done. 25% on threes would be a career low. 31% on twos is absolutely a career low. He is recording career highs in points, rebounds, and assists, and those are per-40 minute highs as well, so it’s not just going from 16 minutes to nearly 22 that’s creating that for him.
Jones also has a career best assist rate per KenPom.com… to go along with a career worst turnover rate. He’s coughing it up more than 23% of the time when anything over 20% is Not Good. His two turnovers off the bench against Wisconsin didn’t cost the Golden Eagles that game, and sure, Jones’ season is just four games old right now. However, between the massive shooting percentage problems and the turnovers, he’s not a Big East caliber point guard, much less a starting PG.
- If someone can jump forward to be that defensive pest that Stevie Mitchell was for the last three years, that answers a lot of questions about that end of the floor.
Nigel James is #105 in the country in steal rate according to KenPom.com, and Adrien Steven is #307. Both Tre Norman and Sean Jones have steal rates that are better than either of those guys, but they don’t have the minutes to qualify for national rankings. I could rummage around in the Hoop Explorer mines for a while to see who’s having a notable impact on the actual defending more than steals, but for the purposes of “who is coming close to tuning up opposing players the way that Mitchell did,” I think comparing these guys to Stevie and his #11 steal rate as a senior works just fine.
- If Josh Clark and Caedin Hamilton can combine one way or another to be a legitimate starting center in the Big East, I’m feeling a lot better about this team.
These two are combining for 27 minutes per game, which is not really a starting center. They’re also both shooting under 43% from the field — your center should probably shooting a bare minimum of 51%, right? — and under 70% from the free throw line. Clark also has two DNP’s this season — Dayton and Oklahoma — and so his 7.6 minutes per game is really more like 6.1 for all 10 Marquette games, and it certainly seems like the coaching staff isn’t inclined to give him minutes against Big East-caliber opponents.
This probably needs more of an exploration than I want to do right here, especially after we’ve already taken a critical look at Hamilton’s play this season, so let’s put a pin in that until a future article.
TL; DR: This isn’t working at all in the slightest, at least from the perspective of the two of them working together to cover a position on the floor.
- If Ben Gold can go back to being a mismatch at the 4 instead of a required presence at the 5, that unlocks a lot of things about this team.
Well, he’s definitely playing the 4 with Hamilton starting at the 5, so that’s a thing. However, he’s sitting on what would be a career low shooting percentage mostly because his three-point shooting is under 33% for the first time since his freshman year, and even then, we saw Gold shoot 39% against Big East teams. It’s not really a shot volume issue, he’s taking about as many threes per 40 minutes as he has his entire career, he’s just not making them.
Gold has started to show an interest in driving the ball into the lane more, which is a good sign for his overall development as a player. He’s also posting a career best defensive rebounding rate where he’s just barely outside the top 100 per KenPom.com, and his turnover rate is at a career low.
I think Ben Gold is playing his part as currently deployed on this roster, and if he was shooting it at a reasonably successful clip, we could make an argument for him as the best player on the team. The question is whether or not that’s the best role for him.
- If the whole team bounces back to shooting at least 35% on three-pointers like they did in Kolek’s last two seasons instead of 32.6% like this past year, everything else takes care of itself.
31.3% right now. Out of guys with more than 15 attempts, only Ben Gold (32.7%) and Adrien Stevens (34.2%) are shooting better than last year’s Not Good number, and only one of them is over that 33.3% cutoff where effective field goal percentage gets to 50%. Big problem here.
- If they can find a way to get back to getting easy buckets at the rim, that’s going to open the floor up for shooters better and make the team less reliant on hitting threes.
This came up during the Wisconsin game. Marquette is (or at least was going into Saturday) the best team in the country at getting shots at the rim. No one in the country had more attempts at the rim per game than the Golden Eagles.
They’re also ranked #217 in the country in two-point shooting percentage according to KenPom.com, and that stat from the Wisconsin game had them somewhere in the 300s in rim shooting percentage.
GOOD NEWS: Getting shots at the rim. BAD NEWS: They’re not actually getting easy buckets at the rim.
- If Nigel James can be a backup point guard, Marquette will have a legit backup at that position for the first time in a couple of years, not just letting Kam Jones and Tyler Kolek switch spots on the floor for a few possessions.
Jury’s still out on Marquette having a legitimate back up point guard, but only because Sean Jones has missed six of Marquette’s 10 games and that has led to James being the starting PG for the last seven contests. The Nigel James part is coming through with flying colors, as he has a top 100 assist rate and a completely acceptable turnover rate. We need to talk about his 27% three-point shooting rate, but I’m not going to jump up and down about his 50% shooting on twos. For the record: James is shooting 3-for-8 on triples in Marquette’s last four games, and that’s 37.5%… and that’s because he missed his one attempt against the Badgers. If that keeps up, he’s 100% fulfilling his part of the issue here.
As mentioned earlier, Sean Jones has not shown to be carrying his side of the equation as a Big East caliber point guard. However, with his shoulder injury, I don’t want to completely shut the door on the chance that the pair of them ends up working out at the position.
- If the light suddenly goes on for Tre Norman, that changes the rotation depth on the team and gives Shaka the Good Problem of finding minutes for everyone.
Steal rate, way up. Offensive rating, way up. Turnover rate? Also way up, but that’s a bad way up. Norman’s minutes are pretty much exactly where they were last season, and after just four against the Badgers, I think we can call this one a failure.
- If what Zaide Lowery did at the end of last season was him making a jump, I wonder if he’s ready to make a leap this year.
To review:
Lowery averaged 5.3 points and 3.7 rebounds in just short of 18 minutes a game, and he knocked down just under 47% of his three-pointers.
Lowery had an offensive rating of 130.6 and a PORPAGATU! of 2.2.
Marquette was +8.6 per 100 possessions on offense with Lowery on the floor, and +2.9 per 100 possessions on defense against top 150 teams and outside of garbage time.
Right now:
8.9 points and 3.2 rebounds in just over 24 minutes a game, but shooting 31.7% from behind the three-point line. That’s 14.7 and 5.3 per 40 minutes, while his end of season pace last year was 11.8 and 7.1 per 40 minutes.
He has an offensive rating of 106.3 and a PORPAGATU! of 1.3.
Marquette is -1.7 per 100 possessions on offense and a +22.8 per 100 possessions on defense with Lowery on the floor compared to when he’s on the bench against top 150 opponents.
No, he’s not the same player he was at the end of last season, but given those defensive numbers, you have to keep Lowery on the court….. although Shaka Smart did just pull him out of the starting lineup this weekend. Probably a bad sign for what the staff thinks about what Lowery is doing out there.
- If the whole team can just avoid those nicks and dings and nagging injuries that don’t actually prevent them from playing, the ones that that eat away at their effectiveness, stuff like “Hey, Stevie Mitchell needed hip surgery, who knew,” I think that’s a net positive for the season.
Sean Jones missed six games with a shoulder thing that kept him in a sling that was immobilizing his arm. Yeah, I know my point was about tiny, slightly bothersome injuries, but when you’ve already lost six games to an actual injury, that means you’re way behind on the “avoid small injuries” front.
- If Royce Parham and Damarius Owens are ready to be load bearing rotation pieces as sophomores this year, that raises Marquette’s ceiling.
All due respect to Royce Parham, I’m not even going to bother looking to see if he counts here. Damarius Owens absolutely does not count since he played three minutes against Valparaiso after gettin yanked for maybe the single worst loose ball/rebounding foul I’ve ever seen in my life, much less his DNP against Oklahoma. This one’s a miss barring one of the greatest single player in-season turnarounds in recorded history.
- If at least two of these four available freshmen pop as rotation guys right away, I think that’s a win for the Golden Eagles.
Safe to say that Nigel James and Adrien Stevens qualify here. Michael Phillips and Josh Clark are nowhere close to being a rotation guy, and I wrote the original piece before we knew that Ian Miletic would be redshirting this season, but I only called for 2 out of 5, and we’re getting that.
While I think we can check this box as a success, I think it’s probably a bad thing for Marquette as a whole that both James and Stevens were in the starting lineup against Wisconsin…. and maybe worse that Stevens led the Golden Eagles in scoring.
- If someone — I don’t care who! — establishes themselves as the go-to scorer that every team needs, that’s going to make things a lot easier on Marquette night in and night out.
If Chase Ross is the top scorer in the entire Big East, I guess he qualifies, right?
Hard to say that he’s the go-to scorer when he’s had the ball in his hands each of the three times that Marquette has failed to get a shot off to win at the end of regulation, though.
- If all of this comes together into at least a tournament bid, then that proves that Shaka Smart’s refusal to use the portal and rely exclusively on internal development is a viable option going forward.
According to BartTorvik.com’s TeamCast function, we can see where a team projects to end up in the NCAA tournament based on what the computers are saying about how each individual game in the future will go.
Marquette currently projects to finish 7-13 in the Big East, 12-19 overall, and end up as the 90th team outside the bubble. If you’re saying “aw, jeez, that’s bad,” it’s not. If the tournament started on Tuesday night, Marquette would be 110 spots outside the bubble.
And how did I end that article back in September?
And until we see the wins start to stack up in November, we’re going to keep asking them.
I don’t know if we’re still asking them, but the answers are looking pretty definitive. 9 out of the 15 Ifs I raised are outright failures with a couple in there going as still up in the air to a certain extent. I’m not trying to tell you that these are the specific reasons that Marquette is where they are right now…. but when there were that many — and probably more! — questions in September and there’s that many negative answers right now…. yeah, that explains a lot.
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