Marquette Basketball: 2018-19 player reviews for the Golden Eagles

C Theo John (SO)

5.5 ppg – 4.9 rpg – 2.1 bpg – 60/0/51 percent shooting

Season’s Successes

Shot-blocking: In this space last season, I mentioned that John could be “one of the top big men in the Big East for the next three years.” Nevertheless, it was still surprising to see John put a vice grip on the starting center spot (save for Heldt’s Senior Day tribute) and actually become one of the best bigs in the conference. John finished fourth among high-major sophomores in block rate, led the Big East with 2.1 blocks per game, and provided Marquette with game-changing rim protection for the first time in the Wojciechowski era.

Post Moves: For a youthful, bouncy, astonishingly chiseled center, John possesses a surprisingly soft touch around the low block. His pet post move is simple – a turn over the right shoulder – but he so strong that he can often bully his defender under the basket and essentially place the ball on the backboard, à la a shorter Steven Adams. Though he rarely sees more than a handful of post opportunities a night, John can credibly create his own offense in a pinch, easing the scoring load on Howard and Hauser.

Areas to Improve

Fouls: Ah yes, the problem for all young bigs. John actually did improve his foul rate from 8.5 FC/40 minutes as a freshman to 7.4 as a sophomore; unfortunately, both numbers still ranked in the 0th (zeroeth?) percentile of college basketball. He picked up at least four fouls in 23 of Marquette’s 34 games. So the improvement was… negligible, to say the least.

John puts himself in foul trouble by attempting to swat literally every shot that is tossed in the direction of the basket, but he also picks up an unfortunate amount of reputation fouls – plays that are only whistled because he is built like a house and the referees know he is foul-prone. Case in point. He certainly needs to stay more disciplined in 2019-20, but he needs a little help from the officials too.

Alley Oops: Let’s compare Oregon’s Kenny Wooten to John:

• 6-foot-9 Wooten (SO): 23.6 mpg, 6.5 ppg, 105.5 ORtg, 15.6 usage rate, 12.8 block rate
• 6-foot-9 John (SO): 19.7 mpg, 5.5 ppg, 105.9 ORtg, 15.8 usage rate, 11.1 block rate

They have almost identical athletic traits and stat lines, yet I’m watching Wooten do this all over the NCAA tournament, and I don’t remember Marquette ever setting John up like that, whether it’s on a pick-and-roll or a baseline cut. MU may not have the personnel to pull off such passes – and maybe Wojo banned them because the Golden Eagles already had so many turnover issues – but it’s still unexplored terrain for this offense. Wooten forces defenders to stick with him when he is rumbling down the lane for an ‘oop; if John could do something similar, opposing defenses would not be able to hedge Howard on screens so aggressively. MU has stretched defenses horizontally with slip-screen threes for the Hausers; now it’s time to stretch teams vertically with lob passes to its low-post leaper.