Marquette Basketball: Resetting the roster after Brendan Bailey’s departure

Rising junior Brendan Bailey has left Marquette Basketball for a professional career. Where does this leave the Golden Eagles in 2020-21?

On Friday, Marquette Basketball’s starting wing Brendan Bailey announced he would skip his final two collegiate seasons to “pursue a career in professional basketball.”

While Bailey did enter his name into the NBA Draft, the 6-foot-8 swingman seems more likely to land overseas, at least to begin his professional career.

As a sophomore, Bailey started all 30 games and averaged 7.1 ppg and 5.2 rpg on 38 percent shooting from behind the arc. He showed real potential at times – including 27 points vs. Maryland – but was ultimately too passive for large portions of the season. When Marquette was in the midst of another season-ending collapse, Bailey did nothing to stem the tide, averaging just 3.9 ppg during the 1-6 stretch. His defense, which appeared to be a real bright spot during his freshman campaign, fell off a cliff in year two.

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Still, the foundation was there to grow into something more as an upperclassman, particularly in a post-Markus Howard world that would have featured more touches for Bailey. It is a bit surprising and disappointing to see him leave before Marquette was able to really bear the fruits of his talent.

Bailey turns 23 next month (he took his two-year Mormon mission after high school), so he understandably wants to get his professional career started. Would he be better off waiting to go pro at age 24 with more of a proven track record than doing so as a relatively unknown 23-year-old? Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, Marquette now has to pick up the pieces without three starters and a key backup big man from last year’s team.

Between rising senior Jamal Cain and three incoming freshmen – 6-foot-11 Dawson Garcia, 6-foot-9 Oso Ighodaro, and 6-foot-7 Justin Lewis – Marquette is pretty well stocked at the nominal power forward slot. Steve Wojciechowski’s immediate problem, however, is that he doesn’t really have anyone who can reliably play the ‘3,’ which is where Bailey would have seen a good chunk of his time in 2020-21.

Cain (5.2 ppg in 18 mpg) will likely have the first crack at the job, and while he should be able to assume a large part of Bailey’s offensive responsibilities, there are some concerns defensively. In 2018-19, Cain was forced to play more small forward next to the Hauser brothers and struggled to keep up with quicker players. In 2019-20, sans Hausers, Cain moved back to a reserve role at the ‘4’ and looked much more comfortable.

If one of the freshmen flash enough lateral quickness, then perhaps they could guard more perimeter players on the defensive end, allowing Cain to act as more of a weak-side rover who blocks shots and grabs rebounds. But counting on any freshman – particularly in a pandemic-affected offseason – to be a stopper on the wing is generally a bad sign for a team’s defensive outlook.

The Golden Eagles could also slide well-built guard Koby McEwen to the ‘3’ in a small-ball lineup, but that might only be possible if Ohio State transfer guard DJ Carton receives a waiver. If the former Buckeye is eligible, a lineup of Carton-Greg Elliott-McEwen-Garcia-Theo John is a possibility. Of course, Carton’s status is unknown, and Elliott is recovering from yet another surgery. McEwen’s inconsistent outside shooting – 32 percent in his last two seasons after a 42 percent mark as a freshman at Utah State – does not exactly make for a snug off-ball fit either.

Two other wing possibilities include 6-foot-4 redshirt freshman Dexter Akanno and 6-foot-5 Gardner-Webb transfer Jose Perez. Akanno has received some comparisons to Sacar Anim, who had enough muscle to play on the wing at 6-foot-4. However, it took Anim awhile to get to that point, and Akanno will likely follow a somewhat similar developmental path. Perez is a traditional transfer, so he will need to sit out a season, though there is at least some chance he receives a waiver (he sat out the last 10 games of the 2019-20 campaign with undisclosed personal reasons). Perez has the size to survive on the wing, though his foot speed may not be up to snuff.

The Bailey departure opens up yet another can of worms for a program that was already teeming with question marks. Can the freshmen make an immediate impact? Will either of the transfers be eligible? How are the three vets recovering from injury? Where does the offense come from without Howard? Is Wojo the right man to lead this group? Will the defense ever improve? And we haven’t even touched on the existential questions surrounding the sport of college basketball in the middle of a pandemic, much less the status of the entire world.

If everything goes right – Carton is eligible, Garcia is a stud from day one, everyone is healthy, and the offense figures itself out – then this is a group that could be back in the 2021 NCAA tournament. But that is a lot of ifs to maybe go dancing. More likely, this will be a semi-competitive rebuilding year for the Golden Eagles during a super-weird sports climate that should set the stage for an improved 2021-22 campaign when the world is closer to normal life.