Big East Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2021-22 season
. Golden Eagles . 10. team. 474. .
2020-2021 Record: 13-14 (8-11)
Probable Starters: Stevie Mitchell, Greg Elliot, Darryl Morsel, Justin Lewis, Kur Kuath
Bench: Tyler Kolek, David Joplin, Emarion Ellis, Kam Jones, Oso Ighodaro, Oliver-Maxence Prosper, Cameron Brown, Keeyan Itejere, Brendan Carney, Michael Kennedy
Marquette finished the season in 9th place in the conference and with that the Wojo era came to an end. Will a fresh start with Shaka Smart revitalize the program? I’m not sure how I feel about Shaka Smart, but I think he will put Marquette in a better position to compete.
He was great at VCU and then never lived up to the hype at Texas, but then again Texas has unreasonable expectations. Wojo landed great recruits and got average results, similar to what Shaka Smart did at Texas, but with even better recruits. Time will tell if we see more of the VCU Shaka or the Texas Shaka.
Where do we start with this team? It’s hard to know what to expect from Marquette this season. As expected, Coach Smart was able to pull in some talent quickly, with five incoming freshmen and some quality transfers. But Marquette is clearly in a rebuilding year. I do expect they will improve under Smart, routinely competing in the middle of the pack of the Big East in a year or two.
However, for this season, they only return 19.8% of their minutes which is typical after a coaching change. The roster includes nine new members. I’d say their ceiling is maybe 7th in the league and anything above that would be completely unexpected.
Shaka Smart’s team is loaded with freshmen and redshirt freshmen, but he returns some experience. Marquette returns Greg Elliot and Justin Lewis, who will headline the team. Smart also brought in Maryland transfer Darryl Morsell who will give Posh Alexander a run for his money for Big East Defensive Player of the Year, although he may get snubbed from an individual award if the team has little success.
Tyler Kolek is another transfer to keep an eye on, the George Mason transfer averaged 10.8 PPG and 3.6 RPG as a freshman. Kur Kuath has also looked good from what I’ve seen, but he will need to be a much bigger piece of the puzzle than he was at Oklahoma.
The team has some nice pieces, but they’re too young and inexperienced to compete atop the Big East, but similar to Creighton, I don’t see Marquette being down for long.