When word got out in mid-February that Marquette men’s basketball head coach Shaka Smart was going to evolve his roster through the use of the transfer portal, there was one looming thought in my mind: When you open a door to bring something in, sometimes things you don’t want to leave manage to slip out.
And so, with the men’s basketball transfer portal set to close on Tuesday night, thus ending the ability for anyone to declare and still be eligible to play next season, we get this report from ESPN’s
Jeff Borzello: Redshirt freshman Sheek Pearson is in the portal.
Pearson committed to Marquette in May 2025 as a Class of 2026 prospect. At the time, he was ranked #63 in the country in the 247 Sports Composite rankings and #66 in ESPN’s top 100. By the end of July, plans for Pearson had changed, and he was enrolling immediately, reclassifying to 2025 and redshirting for the 2025-26 season to get physically ready — MU lists him at 6’11” but just 205 pounds — in a Division 1 weight room. That changed the dynamics of his recruiting rankings a little bit, but the 247 Composite still had him at #71 when it locked into place.
The thought process upon the commitment of Sananda Fru — who was officially announced by Marquette on Tuesday afternoon along with Nolan Minessale — was that Fru’s one year on the MU roster would allow Pearson a little bit of cover to launch himself into the rotation. Fru plays as much as he wants/can as the starting center, Pearson picks up the balance of the time, Josh Clark and Caedin Hamilton do a heck of a job clapping and waving a towel on the sideline, and then in 2027-28, Pearson elevates to the starting job for the remainder of his time in Milwaukee.
That plan is now out the door, although having Fru in place already does make things a little bit easier to deal with in the immediate tense. Before we dig deeper here, let’s go to the scholarship chart.
Okay, so literally 3 hours ago, I presumed Marquette was done with their roster for 2026-27. I would presume that Shaka Smart and his staff thought they were done as well, because one thing you should do before you start portal recruiting is tell everyone that you have coming back what the lay of the land is. IN THEORY, there should have been a long conversation with Pearson about exactly what was what, but sometimes those things don’t matter, not in today’s transfer scenarios.
Fru is set to carry whatever level of minutes at the 5 that he wants. The question is now: What does Shaka Smart want to do about backing Fru up? Royce Parham is not an answer. Josh Clark and Caedin Hamilton can not be trusted to carry 10-15 minutes a game, because if they were, they would have been doing that in February and March of this past season. Perhaps more importantly: What does Smart want to do about replacing Fru for next season? If there’s a big man out there in the portal that’s interested in a time share this season and a starting job next season, obviously he’s the answer.
Whether or not that guy exists, that remains to be seen.
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