Marquette Basketball: 5 reasons to be excited for an NIT run
By Brian Foley
Record-breakers
Marquette has not had enough team success in the Steve Wojciechowski era, but man, his guys get buckets. Over the last two seasons, various Golden Eagles have splashed their names all over the program record books. The NIT provides an opportunity for up to five more games to pad team and individual numbers.
Unsurprisingly, Marquette has already hit the program record for made three-pointers (354), topping last season’s mark of 336. MU is shooting 41.5% for beyond the arc this season (third all-time) and will have to get hot to catch last season’s mark of 42.9% (second all-time).
At the charity stripe, Marquette will simply have to hold steady for the best free throw shooting number in school history. The Golden Eagles’ 79.6% at the line this season currently bests last year’s 78.1%, which is the number to beat. MU is also just 184 points from breaking the program record for points in a season. Based on the team average of 81.2 points per contest (fourth all-time), Marquette could break the school record by the NIT quarterfinals.
Three Golden Eagles – you can probably guess them – are also approaching several individual marks. Andrew Rowsey (643 points) and Markus Howard (633 points) are within striking distance of Dwyane Wade’s all-time single-season scoring total of 710 points in 2002-03. And barring any yips from the line, Howard and Rowsey are likely to finish one-two in single-season free throw shooting (93.9 percent and 90.6 percent, respectively), topping Travis Diener’s 88.3 percent in 2003-04.
Rowsey (110), Howard (102), and Sam Hauser (91) are currently second, third, and fourth in made 3-pointers behind Steve Novak’s 121 in 2005-06. With two or three NIT games, Rowsey could feasibly set the single-season mark. Hauser is shooting 50.8% from deep this season (third all-time), but will bump his own 45.3% from last season out of the top 10.
Looking at the big picture, the sophomore Howard is on pace to destroy the all-time program scoring mark. Jerel McNeal (2005-09) is the current school leader with 1,985 points; Howard already has 1,043 (by comparison, McNeal had just 769 through two seasons).
If Howard stays mostly healthy and plays all four seasons, he should have anywhere from 60-70 more games in his career. If we conservatively estimate he averages 20 points per game as a junior and senior (he scores 20.8 this season), Howard could drop over 2,300 points by the time he hangs up his blue and gold kicks.