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?
We already did assists in this series, and we’ve already done rebounding, too. That just leaves one big question on deck……
Who’s going to lead Marquette in scoring this season?
Candidate #1: Chase Ross
The Texan gets to start us off because Ross is the only returning Marquette player that averaged over 10 points per game last season, and that makes him the only guy on this roster to ever average at least 10 points per game in a college basketball season. He’s also Marquette’s most obvious threat to get going downhill to score at the rim, and mix in his three-point shooting over 36% in each of the past two years, and you’ve got yourself a multi-level scorer with the physical tools to get it done. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you’re comfortable hitching your wagon to a guy with just eight career games of 15 points or more out of 100 in his career. Ross has never needed to be Marquette’s top scorer, and nagging injuries seem to have limited him in the past two seasons as well.
Candidate #2: Zaide Lowery
I know, it’s weird to think that a guy with 177 career points could be the top guy on the scoring chart this season. However, if Lowery gets elevated to the starting lineup and starts playing in the neighborhood of 30 minutes a night, he has the physical tools to be a real danger to opposing lineups. He also shot 38% from behind the arc overall last season and 45% in the back half of the campaign. If he can be a reliable catch and shoot threat as well as a danger to get to the rim at will, with those two things working in tandem to create space, well, that’s how you get to the top of the column.
Candidate #3: Sean Jones
Before he suffered his season ending injury in January 2024 that ended up costing him all of the 2024-25 season as well, Sean Jones was averaging just 5.8 points per game for Marquette. However, that’s a 14.4 points per 40 minutes average, so that seems to tell us that his scoring rate is perhaps in the neighborhood of what you would want to see from a guy as your leading scorer. We’ve always seen that the point guard in head coach Shaka Smart’s offense is capable of putting up big numbers, so that helps Jones’ case here, too.
Jones’ height will work against him in terms of going into the trees in the middle of the floor and trying to score at the rim, and he’s just a 29% three-point shooter for his career so far. But…. if he can harness that 13-for-32 (41%) shooting in 22 Big East games and make that a regular thing, night in and night out, that helps generate space for him to attack the rim.
Is it someone else? I was tempted to start wandering off with ideas, but then I realized that I already suggested two guys who aren’t obvious candidates. Do you have a theory? Vote in the poll and sound off in the comments as needed…..
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