Marquette Basketball: Golden Eagles land Gardner-Webb transfer Jose Perez

Marquette Basketball signed Gardner-Webb transfer Jose Perez on Thursday. The Golden Eagles now have 12 scholarship players, though only 10 are currently eligible in 2020-21.

Weeks after Marquette Basketball head coach Steve Wojciechowski picked up coveted Ohio State transfer DJ Carton, Wojo continued to bolster his future guard depth with another transfer, this time landing Gardner-Webb’s Jose Perez.

Perez, listed at 6-foot-5 and 200 lbs, averaged 15.1 ppg, 6.0 rpg, and 3.5 apg in his two seasons with the Runnin’ Bulldogs. The Bronx native was the runner-up for the Big South Freshman of the Year award in 2018-19. Barring an NCAA rule change or a granted waiver, Perez will sit out the 2020-21 season and will have two years of eligibility remaining.

The statistics paint a blurry picture for Perez. He was impressively efficient as a freshman when he shot 45 percent from the field and 38 percent from deep, all while playing over 31 minutes per game with a 26 percent usage rate (only 13 freshmen soaked up that much responsibility in 2018-19, and Perez finished with the second-best effective field goal percentage among them).

Gardner-Webb ultimately made the NCAA tournament that season as a 16 seed, and while the ‘Dawgs fell to top-seeded Virginia in a hard-fought first-round matchup, Perez still dropped 19 points on 7-10 shooting against the defensive-minded national champions. In fact, in Gardner-Webb’s five games against upper-echelon competition that year – VCU, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, and UVA – Perez essentially maintained his season averages, posting 14 ppg on 45 percent shooting.

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But 2019-20 was a different story. A preseason candidate to win Big South Player of the Year, Perez’s raw statistics remained nearly identical to his freshman season, but his percentages cratered across the board, as he shot just 34 percent from the field and 25 percent from three. Among the 335 players who finished with a usage rate north of 25 percent last season, Perez finished dead last in effective field goal percentage (37.7 percent). His shooting numbers at the rim similarly collapsed. Two of Perez’s top running mates from the 2019 tourney squad did graduate, so it might have been a classic case of trying to do too much. He also missed the final 10 games of the 2019-20 season due to undisclosed personal reasons; it is entirely possible that something was weighing so heavily on his shoulders that it affected his game on the court.

While the shooting remains a giant question mark, Perez does bring some known attributes to the table. He is supremely effective at finding his way to the free throw line (he was third in the Big South in free throw attempts over the last two years despite missing time to end his sophomore season). Koby McEwen proved effective at drawing fouls last year, but with Markus Howard and Sacar Anim departing and taking their 13 free throw attempts per game with them, the Golden Eagles need someone who can put pressure on opposing defenses.

Perez is also a reliable ball-handler; he was one of just 10 players over the two last years to post an assist rate north of 21 percent with a sub-13 percent turnover rate (joining regular MU foes Collin Gillespie, Kamar Baldwin, and D’Mitrik Trice). In a post-Howard world, Marquette will need to remake itself on the backs of an equal-opportunity system. Perez is exactly the kind of heady player who can keep the offense chugging along.

There are some defensive concerns, however. Perez’ metrics on that end of the floor are not exactly encouraging, and making the jump to a more athletic league should only exacerbate those issues. Defense has not exactly been a strong point for Marquette in the Wojo era either. At the very least, though, Perez does possess decent size at 6-foot-5, and is very rarely in foul trouble. One potential silver lining – as Perez’ minutes are reduced from the gargantuan 35 mpg he was averaging with Gardner-Webb, he may have more energy to expend on the defensive end, especially if his defensive effort is directly linked to his playing time.

Marquette still has several moving pieces ahead of the 2020-21 campaign, with Brendan Bailey maintaining his eligibility while seeking NBA Draft information, and potentially one, both, or neither of the Carton/Perez transfer duo deemed eligible to play this fall. It seems fair to assume Bailey will be back on campus, though nothing is guaranteed during these uncertain times. With Carton and Perez eligible, the Golden Eagles would suddenly be flush with backcourt depth, joining the returning McEwen, Greg Elliott, Symir Torrence, and Dexter Akanno.

There are a lot of question marks in that group without Howard, but with Carton oozing star potential and McEwen and Elliott getting healthier, Marquette could cobble together more than enough perimeter playmaking. Without the two transfers, though, things get much stickier, and even more pressure will be heaped upon Marquette’s incoming freshmen.

The roster is set up well for the 2020-21 season, regardless of immediate eligibility, but with potential transfers, NBA Draft decisions, and additional COVID-19 news, betting on anything more than a year in advance is a fool’s errand.