Marquette Basketball: How will Steve Wojciechowski balance the rotation?

Marquette Basketball enters 2018-19 with its deepest rotation in the Steve Wojciechowski era. How will Wojo find minutes for everyone throughout the season?

Marquette’s Steve Wojciechowski and his staff have consistently crushed the recruiting trail, both for high school prospects and collegiate transfers.

Even with the departure of the leading scorer Andrew Rowsey, Marquette heads into the 2018-19 season loaded with a bevy of offensive weapons and players with defensive upside. But will Wojo be able to hand out enough minutes to keep everyone on the team happy?

Marquette filled all 13 scholarship spots for the upcoming campaign, though Utah State transfer Koby McEwen is required to sit out this season, per NCAA rules. That leaves 12 eligible players fighting for five on-court positions and 200 available minutes each game.

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Two players – freshman Brendan Bailey and redshirt freshman Ike Eke – do seem like potential bench-warming candidates, even if they have enough talent to play right away. Eke is coming off a redshirt season and January back surgery, so he will still need some time to get his feet wet. Eke will not be permanently glued to the bench, but with so many frontcourt options (which we’ll discuss later), it will be hard to get him real minutes this season. Wojo could occasionally toss Eke out there for a change of pace and ride him for a bit if he makes a few high-energy plays.

Bailey’s situation is even more unique. The former four-star prospect was in the same recruiting class as juniors Markus Howard and Sam Hauser, but did not join the program until this offseason due to his two-year Mormon mission. It’s anyone’s guess what kind of shape the 6-foot-8 Bailey is in now, or how often he even touched a basketball during his mission. He is a potential redshirt candidate, though that means he would be 24 years old by the start of his redshirt senior year. Not ideal for a former top-50 recruit who likely has pro aspirations.

For math’s sake, let’s just say Bailey and Eke both play this season, but not much more than spot minutes in mostly mop-up duty. That leaves 10 qualified guys battling it out for time.

In the backcourt, Wojo will surround Howard with grad transfer Joseph Chartouny, redshirt junior Sacar Anim, and sophomore Greg Elliott. While Elliott averaged 17.2 minutes per game as a freshman, Chartouny and Anim are more accustomed to bigger roles. Chartouny averaged 34 minutes in his three seasons with Fordham; Anim started 30 games for Marquette and played 27 minutes last year. All four of those guards deserve to play at least 20 minutes per night; unfortunately, someone will get the short end of the stick.

The frontcourt will be even hairier though. Wojo will be able to mix and match with a variety of lineups, but in the end, there are only three spots for Hauser, senior Matt Heldt, sophomore Jamal Cain, sophomore Theo John, transfer Ed Morrow, and redshirt freshman Joey Hauser.

Heldt started all but three games last year and averaged over 21 minutes per contest. Though he is a solid defender, he really does not offer anything on the offensive end. If someone else emerges, Heldt could see his minutes reduced as the season progresses.

So who could steal minutes at the five? John averaged less than 12 minutes as a freshman, but showed an offensive repertoire and tantalizing spurts of defensive athleticism that Heldt does not possess. Of course, John also battled dumb fouls and fell for every shot fake he saw. If he can limit the miscues, he is too athletic to ride the bench. And Morrow, although only 6-foot-7, is an elite rebounder and shot blocker and could siphon off center minutes in smaller lineups.

Sam Hauser is the obvious starter at either the three or the four, but he will have plenty of competition from Cain and his younger brother Joey. Cain is a bouncy wing with tons of unlocked potential, and he also happened to knock down over 47 percent of his three-point attempts as a freshman. And the younger Hauser, who enrolled at Marquette for the spring semester last season after an injury derailed his senior year of high school, is one of the best high schoolers to sign with Marquette this century. If he is anything like his brother, and indications are he could be even better, than he deserves minutes right away.

This was really just a long way of saying that Marquette has at least 10 players who deserve at least double-digit minutes per game. But a certain point, a hierarchy needs to be established and the best guys need to play. Even if Wojo prefers to use a more balanced rotation, which he did with 2016-17’s tourney squad, I expect Howard and Hauser to still average about 30 minutes a night. They are simply too talented to sit for long stretches, which leaves roughly 140 minutes for the other eight players.

Juggling this rotation is no easy task sitting from behind a computer in May; it will be even harder for Wojciechowski on the sidelines when the games begin in November. And this “problem” isn’t going away any time soon. Barring any injuries, transfers, or early draft entrants (all big ifs), Marquette will have almost the same exact problem in 2019-20 as well.

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This is not to say Marquette has a flawless team. Defense is still a massive question mark and how each player grows over this offseason will impact this season more than if Anim plays 21 or 27 minutes per game. But the Golden Eagles do have a lot of flexibility, which is certainly better than the alternative. It’s up to Wojo to figure out how to utilize it.

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