While it may come as a bit of surprise, Steve Wojciechowski has been fired as head coach of Marquette Basketball after a seven-year stint. Wojciechowski was born and raised in Maryland, starring in high school in Baltimore. He played collegiately under Mike Krzyzewski at Duke in the mid-1990’s.
Wojciechowski was one of the best defensive players in the league and played a major role in teaching defense as he joined the Blue Devils staff soon after his playing career ended. He was an assistant on the Duke bench for 15 years before Marquette hired him in 2014.
Wojciechowski inherited a Marquette program in very good shape after the success of predecessors Tom Crean and Buzz Williams. Unfortunately, he just didn’t have the same success as those two coaches. A year before Wojciechowski was hired, the Golden Eagles became part of the new Big East. Unfortunately, in his seven years, Marquette never won a conference title, making just two NCAA Tournament appearances, both ending in opening round defeat.
This past season, Marquette finished just 13-14 and were under .500 in Big East play for the fourth time under Wojciechowski. Some have been surprised to see Marquette pull the trigger, even after their recent struggles, but seven years is still plenty of time for success. Wojciechowski recruited star Markus Howard to the Golden Eagles and still struggled.
That being said, Marquette is still a power conference job in the Big East and should attract some very solid candidates. Nobody at Marquette expects this program to suddenly win the conference every year, but this Golden Eagles program should be an NCAA Tournament contender on a more regular basis.
Marquette is located in Milwaukee and isn’t far from the fertile recruiting grounds in Chicago. If Tom Crean could bring Dwyane Wade to the Golden Eagles some two decades ago, then the next head coach can certainly find the next hidden jewel.
We’ll be taking a closer look at a number of potential candidates for the head coaching job at Marquette. No matter what this program has done in recent times, this is a pretty solid Big East job that can turn into a gold mine with a little hard work. We’ll limit this initially to five candidates, but there will likely be a number of names pop up for the job. One name we’ll skip is Crean, who currently sits at Georgia and would no doubt welcome a return to the Golden Eagles.
Nonetheless, we press on with our list of names that could wind up as the next head coach of these Golden Eagles.