Marquette Basketball: 5 reasons to be excited for an NIT run

Valuable experience

Marquette entered the season with several question marks as Luke Fischer, Jajuan Johnson, and Katin Reinhardt graduated, in addition to Duane Wilson moving to Texas A&M as a grad transfer. After the Maui Invitational in November, junior wing Haanif Cheatham also transferred. Nearly 57% of last season’s minutes were gone for the majority of the 2017-18 season.

That forced most of the team into new roles at the collegiate level. Howard and Rowsey were now the unquestioned scorers while Hauser moved from spot-up weapon to a crucial third option.

With so many wing players departing from last year’s tourney team, Sacar Anim, Jamal Cain, and Greg Elliott were heavily relied on as defenders and slashers. Those three owned just 83 combined minutes of college ball coming into this year (all from Anim’s freshman season in 2015-16). Matt Heldt, Theo John, and eventually Harry Froling replaced Fischer, Marquette’s all-time field goal percentage leader. The growing pains were understandable even if they were frustrating in the moment.

Now Wojo has even more time to iron out those wrinkles and develop this program. Marquette has additional practices and games to help get key contributors ready for next season. As talented as Rowsey is, hopefully, we see a few more minutes with Howard leading the charge and Elliott at the two, the expected starting backcourt for 2018-19.

Obviously, Marquette would love to win the NIT title, but it’s just as important to establish a foundation for next season.