The 2025-26 college basketball season is right around the corner, so let’s dive into the Marquette men’s basketball roster and take a look at what to expect from each player this season. Going forward in these Player Previews, we’ll be going in this order: The four true freshmen expected to play this season going in alphabetical order by last name — skipping past Sheek Pearson who is projected to redshirt — then moving on to the redshirt freshman, then the redshirt junior who missed last year, and then going through
the returning players in ascending order of total minutes played in 2024-25.
We’re going to organize our thoughts about the upcoming season as it relates to each player into categories, as we always do:
- Reasonable Expectations
- Why You Should Get Excited
- Potential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we turn our attention to a sophomore that maybe never even quite got a chance to get on the launching platform last season…….
Damarius Owens
Sophomore — #9 — Forward — 6’7” — 205 lbs. — Rochester, New York
We have to talk about three notable things about Damarius Owens’ first season in Milwaukee. The first is a groin injury that kept him out of preseason practice early on last season. The second is a toe injury that he picked up in MU’s preseason scrimmage a year ago against Oklahoma, and that caused him to miss MU’s first three games of the season. The third is a postseason surgery that, according to head coach Shaka Smart, “held him out of live play all the way up until early July.”
I want you to consider all of that as you remember that Owens played double digit minutes in just 12 of the 30 games he appeared in for Marquette last year, none of which were after March 1st and only 10 of which were against high major competition. Owens got a late start to working his way into the lineup, and then when maybe he was on the verge of earning some playing time, he got set back again. Smart didn’t make it clear whether or not it was the case, but I’m presuming that the postseason surgery was to correct something from the toe injury. If that’s the case, then whatever we saw from Owens last year was reduced from his potential because he was hobbled to one degree or another by the injury.
He wasn’t bad last year, although I presume even he would agree that shooting 34% on two-pointers is inexcusable and can not happen again. There just wasn’t much to his freshman season, and given that he was the sixth best prospect signed by Marquette since the turn of the century and best ranked prospect signed by Shaka Smart while at MU, that was kind of a bummer.
But perhaps it was all diminished by injury and now that he’s put all of that in the rear view since July, we’ll see more of the Damarius Owens that we maybe expected to see last year.
Reasonable Expectations
Starting from the perspective of “well, if he’s healthy, he has to be better/do more, right,” we can put last year out on Front Street and say that’s the starting point: 2.6 points, 1.2 rebounds, 9.5 minutes per game. Yeah, that should be easy enough to surpass and that’s probably why the BartTorvik.com algorithm projects him waaaaay past that. 21 minutes a night, 7.1 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.4 assists per game. In my head, I have Owens slotted behind Zaide Lowery when it comes to the possibilities of who takes the starting lineup spots not going to Sean Jones, Chase Ross, and Ben Gold, so expecting him to start is a little too far. Part of the rotation of guards and wings that substitute in and out somewhat freely as the game rolls along? That’s definitely in the cards here.
Why You Should Get Excited
I can’t help but think about the very first thing we saw from Damarius Owens last season. Okay, technically it wasn’t immediately upon stepping onto the court for the first time, but the very first thing he did that got recorded in the play by play description was snag a steal for a breakaway and then convert the two free throws after Maryland fouled him to stop the bucket.
I also keep thinking about his performance in the Iowa State game when Chase Ross went out with an ankle twist pretty quickly and MU was going to need minutes from someone on the bench to stay in contention with the Cyclones. 11 points, two rebounds, an assist, and a block, including 3-for-4 long range shooting in a raucous Hilton Coliseum is a heck of a “we’re gonna need something from you tonight” performance.
There’s a version of this season both for Marquette and for Owens where his top line talent emerges pretty quickly and maximizing his minutes becomes critical to the Golden Eagles’ success. If he’s got it, then Marquette should run with it. There’s too many questions about this season to just ignore a star-making turn if that happens.
Potential Pitfalls
It is possible that the combination of the groin injury and the toe injury slowed Damarius Owens down a little too much last season, more than normal “he’s a freshman and he’s adjusting to how to get this done at the high major Division 1 level” kind of things. If Owens was just a step or half-step slower than he could have been last year, from a pure physical perspective, then I’m not terribly worried about what I’m about to point out to you.
Hoop Explorer says that Marquette was giving up 108.8 points per 100 possessions with Owens on the court last season against top 200 opponents.
Is that bad, you ask? Well, starting at the perspective of 100 per 100 trips — a point per possession — is average, then yeah, it’s not good. When I point out that Marquette was giving up just 94.2 points per 100 possessions with Owens on the bench, yeah, it’s really bad.
Again: If this is because nagging injuries slowed him down a tad while he was learning how to defend at the Division 1 level, it is what it is and you just hope that getting healthy buys Owens that step back and he’s fine in 2025-26. If it’s “he can’t defend” or something similar, then it could be a very long season for him, especially if Marquette has to plow their way through games without a devastating offense to make things a little bit easier on the defensive side.
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