Coming into the season as an unpredictable team with plenty of questions to answer, Marquette Basketball has been anything but predictable so far.
At 5-5 heading into a 10-day break before a road game in Washington D.C against Georgetown, Marquette Basketball is about right where they expected to be. However, the route to get where Marquette is at right now has been a complete rollercoaster that certainly wasn’t expected. The only consistent thing about Marquette’s season so far is Steve Lavin announcing what seems like every single game.
While having a .500 record in college basketball usually indicates a far below average team in college basketball, Marquette has had a very tough strength of schedule. Besides dominating the three “cupcakes” the Golden Eagles have played, the other seven teams have all been in Kenpom’s top 50.
Not only did Marquette face challenging non-conference competition in Wisconsin, UCLA, Oklahoma State, but Marquette was also tasked with an extremely difficult beginning to their Big East slate, facing the teams that are heavily projected to be in the top half of the conference.
Marquette’s roster had a dramatic shift this season as it’s most noticeable departure was the program’s all-time leading scorer, 2-time All-American, and Wooden Award candidate Markus Howard. Marquette lost much more, including 2 indispensable starters in Sacar Anim and Brendan Bailey, and 7 foot Jayce Johnson. It’s also worth mentioning that Marquette lost an amazing assistant coach in Stan Johnson, who is now the head coach of Loyola Marymount.
Not only has Marquette seen previous pieces step into a bigger role effectively, but Marquette has also heavily relied on a recruiting class ranked 21st in the country heading into this season and the 2nd highest ranked in the Big East to UConn. Dawson Garcia and Justin Lewis are two significant contributors for the Golden Eagles as they didn’t take long to adjust to the college level and have been super impactful on both ends of the floor.
Marquette was also aggressive in the transfer market, landing Ohio State transfer DJ Carton (the 4th highest ranked immediately-eligible transfer nationally by ESPN) and highly sought Gardner-Webb transfer Jose Perez (averaged 15.2 points, 6.5 rebounds, 4.2 rebounds, and a 1 steal per game as a sophomore). As expected, DJ Carton has been heavily relied upon for the Golden Eagles and arguably is the most important player on the roster.
With new pieces and an overall young roster, Marquette is 186th in the country in terms of previous NCAA experience. However, the roster is not as young as it might seem with 3 senior starters and a junior key role player (Greg Elliot) in what has been a relatively thin 7-8 man rotation to this point.
Before finally diving into the takeaways, Marquette started the season out strong destroying Arkansas Pine Bluff and Eastern Illinois. With terrible second halves against Oklahoma State and UCLA, Marquette narrowly lost to both opponents responding to each loss with upset victories against two top ten teams in #4 Wisconsin and #9 Creighton (and a win vs Green Bay).
The last three games in conference play have been two heartbreaking losses to Seton Hall and Xavier and entering the 10-day break on a sour note with a 17-point victory at the hands of #5 Villanova.