Big East Basketball: Ranking of 25 best players from last decade (2013-23)

3. Markus Howard

A collegiate career defined by dominant offensive play, Howard is a 5’11 guard from Chandler, Arizona who did incredible work at Marquette. Howard quite literally took off and ran with the Golden Eagles’ offense during his time in Wisconsin and was one of the nation’s best scorers during his career, let alone the Big East.

As a freshman, Howard put up 13.2 points per game but those numbers wouldn’t touch his production later in his career. He shot at least 40% from outside the arc in each of his four collegiate seasons and would be above 20 points a game from there on out. Howard never won an NCAA Tournament game while at Marquette but scored a boatload of points, including three separate 50-point performances. He actually averaged 27.8 points per game in his senior year, the season that was cut short by the pandemic, after putting up similar numbers as a junior. No one in the nation could compare to that kind of production at a power conference school.

The all-time scoring leader in Big East history with 2,761 career points, Howard was a two-time All-American and the Big East Player of the Year for his junior season. He was one of the top scorers in the nation in those final years and was one of the best long-distance scorers as well. There simply wasn’t or hasn’t been the same type of scorer as Howard in this conference and his contributions to Marquette were clear and concrete.