At some point recently, YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles men’s basketball team hit the switch to flip the roster page on GoMarquette.com over to the 2026-27 edition. Makes sense since we’re off and running into the summer training portion of the calendar and we’re not that far off from the team’s announced summer trip to Vancouver at the end of July. That means 1) we’ve got uniform numbers for all the new guys and one change for a returning guy and 2) the chance to check in to see how Todd Smith’s strength
and conditioning program is impacting the roster.
We’ll get to the uniform numbers in a different post in the future — it’s a long summer, y’all — so for today we’re going to make a note of who has gotten a little bit bigger thanks to their time in the weight room over the past year. We’ll start with the returning players before dealing with the official measurements for the two freshmen coming in for the fall. Let’s go in alphabetical order.
Josh Clark: 240 pounds, now 245
Nigel James: 190 pounds, now 195
Ian Miletic: 200 pounds, now 205
Michael Phillips: 200 pounds, now 205
Nash Walker: 190 pounds, now 205
I don’t think there’s really anything really important to take away from any of these, although Walker gaining 15 pounds since MU listed him on the roster when he joined at the start of the spring semester is kind of impressive. I don’t think that changes much about what anyone thinks about what he can add to the team, but the extra size will probably help him out as he adjusts to playing D1 hoops. Clark adding five pounds is worth noting just because it’s going to be essentially impossible to tell that there’s five extra pounds on his 7’1” frame. On top of that: Remember that he was at 225 during his redshirt season in 2024-25, so this is all a big improvement.
There are two other things I want to mention for guys with Division 1 experience that aren’t a weight gain. The first is that Royce Parham is now listed at 6’9” instead of the 6’8” that he was at on the 2025-26 roster. The other is that Nolan Minessale lost five pounds in transit from St. Thomas in the Twin Cities to arriving on campus in Milwaukee. The Tommies listed him at 6’5” and 200 pounds, while Marquette is debuting him on the roster at the same height but just 195 pounds.
Let’s move along to the two freshmen. As you would expect, 247 Sports locked in a height and weight for them at some point and then never checked back in with them. No slight to 247, they’ve got hundreds of basketball players in every single recruiting class to keep track of, you can’t be chasing after people to get them to send you confirmed changes to that information. On top of that, I think we’re all aware of precisely how fast heights and weights can change for your average 15/16/17 year old.
In any case, when you see the height and weight on their 247 Sports page, that gives you one impression of what they can be as a player. Finding out where the player actually is when they get to campus can change that, especially if there’s a notable change, something more than the five pounds of gain that we saw from most of the returning players.
For example!
Alex Egbuonu
247 Sports: 6’6”, 220 pounds
Roster page: 6’7”, 235 pounds
Ethan Johnston
247 Sports: 6’6”, 185 pounds
Roster page: 6’7”, 210 pounds
Now, there’s a chance that these weights end up shifting around between now and the start of the season. After all, what we’re seeing here is essentially Egbuonu and Johnston showing up on campus and stepping on a scale before they start any training programs, and then the team putting that on the website. I’m not trying to make Todd Smith’s summer conditioning program out to be some kind of magic elixir or the toughest thing that these guys have ever done…. but it might be the most consistent training program that they’ve gotten in their 18 years on the earth. Mix that with the athletic department’s ability to fine tune their nutrition a bit? I could see how both guys end up losing five pounds in mass while making strength and fitness gains.
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