Shouts to loyal reader and commenter mufan2006. They’re the reason why we are gathered here today, dearly beloved.
Back in September, long before the 2025-26 season started for Marquette men’s basketball, I put together along list of If statements about the Golden Eagles for the upcoming campaign. It was a way of hanging a thesis statement on all of our season preview stuff, namely “There’s a whole bunch of questions about this team that we can’t answer until we see them play some games.”
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In December, with Marquette sitting at 5-5 on the year and staring down the barrel of likely following up a road loss to Wisconsin with a road loss to Purdue, I spent time during Finals Week to circle back to those If statements. The end result?
9 out of the 15 Ifs I raised are outright failures with a couple in there going as still up in the air to a certain extent. I’m not trying to tell you that these are the specific reasons that Marquette is where they are right now…. but when there were that many — and probably more! — questions in September and there’s that many negative answers right now…. yeah, that explains a lot.
In the comments on that December article, mufan2006 noted that it might be interesting to see if the nine failures were still failures when the season was over. It was a terrific idea, and mufan2006 reminded me of it as I asked at the time, so LET’S GOOOOOO!
I’m actually going to go through all 15 of them — because believe it or not, there are positives that have changed sides since December! — and I’ll include both the original If and the reaction in December. Is this going to get long? Almost assuredly, since the December article clocked in at over 2,500 words, including the original If statements in there.
Okay, let’s take a deep breath and dive in.
—If Chase Ross can stay healthy for a whole season, we could see that leap we’ve been expecting to see since his freshman year.
So far so good on the ticky-tack/relatively minor injury front for Ross. His shooting inside the arc — and for Marquette’s system, that essentially means at the rim — is at a career high, as are his season averages for points, rebounds, assists, and steals. He’s leading the Big East in scoring at 19.5 points per game, and he’d probably be doing a little bit better in the scoring department if he was shooting better than his current 32% from behind the three-point line. Ross is also being asked to take a lot more three-pointers than he has in the past, he’s up to a career high 9.2 per 40 minutes of action after never clearing six per 40 minutes in the past. That probably means he’s taking some shots that he maybe shouldn’t, but that’s the kind of thing you have to ask your top scorer to do.
TL; DR: If he’s not leaping, Chase Ross is at least jumping forward.
YIKES. I wrote the December check in on these Ifs at the 10 game mark. As mentioned in Chase Ross’ Player Review, he dropped off a cliff at the nine game mark and never really found his way back. Just to put a number on it: 11.9 points per game for the rest of the season and just 28% on long range attempts. I guess the good news is that he dropped down to just 4.5 per 40 minutes from beyond the arc. He also picked up an elbow issue riiiight around this time that we didn’t learn about for another month. I don’t know if the best case scenario is “Chase had an injury and was bad, these things are unrelated” or “Chase’s injury made him bad,” but either way, this one flips from positive to negative since December.
—If Sean Jones is all the way back from his knee surgery, I bet Shaka Smart and Nevada Smith can coach him into being a Big East caliber point guard.
Yes, he has missed time with a shoulder issue that has nothing to do with his knee reconstruction and recovery. Ignoring that aspect of it… Jones has not been good in his 87 minutes of action. 28% from the field isn’t getting it done. 25% on threes would be a career low. 31% on twos is absolutely a career low. He is recording career highs in points, rebounds, and assists, and those are per-40 minute highs as well, so it’s not just going from 16 minutes to nearly 22 that’s creating that for him.
Jones also has a career best assist rate per KenPom.com… to go along with a career worst turnover rate. He’s coughing it up more than 23% of the time when anything over 20% is Not Good. His two turnovers off the bench against Wisconsin didn’t cost the Golden Eagles that game, and sure, Jones’ season is just four games old right now. However, between the massive shooting percentage problems and the turnovers, he’s not a Big East caliber point guard, much less a starting PG.
In his three Big East games before getting knocked out for the season due to a foot injury that we will choose to believe had nothing to do with his knee injury, Jones had a turnover rate of just 10.3% and he shot 33% on two-pointers. I will let you decide whether it’s good news or bad news that Jones shot just six two-point attempts in 63 minutes across three games, because it’s definitely bad news that he only made two of them….. and even worse that he went 0-for-3 in the final two games of his Marquette career. The turnover rate is fantastic news, especially since it was correcting his problem from earlier in the season, but at the end of the day, even after Nigel James took his starting gig, Sean Jones wasn’t working out as a Big East caliber guard.
—If someone can jump forward to be that defensive pest that Stevie Mitchell was for the last three years, that answers a lot of questions about that end of the floor.
Nigel James is #105 in the country in steal rate according to KenPom.com, and Adrien Steven is #307. Both Tre Norman and Sean Jones have steal rates that are better than either of those guys, but they don’t have the minutes to qualify for national rankings. I could rummage around in the Hoop Explorer mines for a while to see who’s having a notable impact on the actual defending more than steals, but for the purposes of “who is coming close to tuning up opposing players the way that Mitchell did,” I think comparing these guys to Stevie and his #11 steal rate as a senior works just fine.
James got his steal rate all the way up to #52 in the country and Chase Ross, for all his other shortcomings, ended up even better at #44 in the country. Stevens even improved on his #307 ranking from December to end the year at #212. That aspect of the defense for all three of them helped manage the loss of Stevie Mitchell.
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Now, I’ll go ahead and wander around in the Hoop Explorer mines now that we have a full season of data to look at, and the fact of the matter is that against top 150 opponents and outside of garbage time, Chase Ross was not positive defender for the team based on/off data, but James and Stevens were. They weren’t good defenders, merely an improvement on what the team looked like without them on the floor.
Still, the steal rates do tell a story about being a pest, and that’s what we wanted to see. These guys improved on where they were in December, so that’s good news for what we’re doing here.
—If Josh Clark and Caedin Hamilton can combine one way or another to be a legitimate starting center in the Big East, I’m feeling a lot better about this team.
These two are combining for 27 minutes per game, which is not really a starting center. They’re also both shooting under 43% from the field — your center should probably shooting a bare minimum of 51%, right? — and under 70% from the free throw line. Clark also has two DNP’s this season — Dayton and Oklahoma — and so his 7.6 minutes per game is really more like 6.1 for all 10 Marquette games, and it certainly seems like the coaching staff isn’t inclined to give him minutes against Big East-caliber opponents.
This probably needs more of an exploration than I want to do right here, especially after we’ve already taken a critical look at Hamilton’s play this season, so let’s put a pin in that until a future article.
TL; DR: This isn’t working at all in the slightest, at least from the perspective of the two of them working together to cover a position on the floor.
In Big East play, Clark and Hamilton averaged 14.5 minutes per game. Hamilton appeared in all 20 games, while Clark racked up just 62 minutes across 13 appearances. For all 20 games, that’s really a 3.1 per game average instead of the 4.8 you’d see on a stat sheet. In total between them, that’s a 20 game average of 12.8 minutes per game in league play. Hamilton was still shooting under 43%, while Clark got up to 54%… but that’s just 7-for-13 in 13 games.
It wasn’t working at all when I looked at it in December, and along the way, Shaka Smart and his staff figured out that it REALLY wasn’t working at kind of stopped trying.
—If Ben Gold can go back to being a mismatch at the 4 instead of a required presence at the 5, that unlocks a lot of things about this team.
Well, he’s definitely playing the 4 with Hamilton starting at the 5, so that’s a thing. However, he’s sitting on what would be a career low shooting percentage mostly because his three-point shooting is under 33% for the first time since his freshman year, and even then, we saw Gold shoot 39% against Big East teams. It’s not really a shot volume issue, he’s taking about as many threes per 40 minutes as he has his entire career, he’s just not making them.
Gold has started to show an interest in driving the ball into the lane more, which is a good sign for his overall development as a player. He’s also posting a career best defensive rebounding rate where he’s just barely outside the top 100 per KenPom.com, and his turnover rate is at a career low.
I think Ben Gold is playing his part as currently deployed on this roster, and if he was shooting it at a reasonably successful clip, we could make an argument for him as the best player on the team. The question is whether or not that’s the best role for him.
Double whammy here: Gold ended up playing at the 5 for most of the rest of the season because Shaka Smart (rightfully!) abandoned forcefeeding Caedin Hamilton 20+ minutes a night and then Gold shot just 23% on triples in Big East play. That dropped his season average to just 26%, so he wasn’t even a fun mismatch for the Golden Eagles as a center that could step outside and knock down shots.
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Given that Gold’s three-point shooting dropped off a cliff, you could easily say that his mid-league play leg injury played a major role in that problem. He did end up with a career high number of two-point attempts and he shot a very welcome 66% on those this season, including 72% in Big East play. The defensive rebounding rate stayed way up for his career best even if it drifted back to just inside the top 400. He just missed the top 100 on turnover rate as he finished in the single digits there for the only time in his career.
There’s things to like about what happened to Gold in 2025-26, and he continued doing some things that he was doing well for the first five weeks, but the full picture of this If definitely did not happen.
—If the whole team bounces back to shooting at least 35% on three-pointers like they did in Kolek’s last two seasons instead of 32.6% like this past year, everything else takes care of itself.
31.3% right now. Out of guys with more than 15 attempts, only Ben Gold (32.7%) and Adrien Stevens (34.2%) are shooting better than last year’s Not Good number, and only one of them is over that 33.3% cutoff where effective field goal percentage gets to 50%. Big problem here.
31.8% for the season, 32.7% in the 20 game Big East slate. The good news for the future: Adrien Stevens (41.9%), Nigel James (38.6%), and Royce Parham (38.6%) were all outstanding shooters in Big East action. The bad news for evaluating this If for the season: Chase Ross, Damarius Owens, and Ben Gold all shot under 28% on more than 10 attempts per game on average.
—If they can find a way to get back to getting easy buckets at the rim, that’s going to open the floor up for shooters better and make the team less reliant on hitting threes.
This came up during the Wisconsin game. Marquette is (or at least was going into Saturday) the best team in the country at getting shots at the rim. No one in the country had more attempts at the rim per game than the Golden Eagles.
They’re also ranked #217 in the country in two-point shooting percentage according to KenPom.com, and that stat from the Wisconsin game had them somewhere in the 300s in rim shooting percentage.
GOOD NEWS: Getting shots at the rim. BAD NEWS: They’re not actually getting easy buckets at the rim.
Marquette finished the year as the fourth best team in the country in two-point attempt distance according to KenPom.com, meaning only three times got closer to the rim on their attempts than the Golden Eagles did. On top of that, Marquette was the best high major team in the country at getting as close to the rack as possible. There is no other way to say this: Marquette was elite at getting to the rim in 2025-26. That is a fact that can not be denied.
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Also a fact: Marquette finished the year #147 in the country in two-point shooting percentage at 52.6%, and in league play, they were fourth best at 53.8% while holding the shortest average two-point distance in the entire conference. Butler was #2, and they were a full foot further away from the rim than Marquette on average. There’s an argument to be made that MU improved on this from where they were in December — #217 vs #147 — but actually finishing and actually getting buckets at the rim remained a massive issue all season long.
—If Nigel James can be a backup point guard, Marquette will have a legit backup at that position for the first time in a couple of years, not just letting Kam Jones and Tyler Kolek switch spots on the floor for a few possessions.
Jury’s still out on Marquette having a legitimate back up point guard, but only because Sean Jones has missed six of Marquette’s 10 games and that has led to James being the starting PG for the last seven contests. The Nigel James part is coming through with flying colors, as he has a top 100 assist rate and a completely acceptable turnover rate. We need to talk about his 27% three-point shooting rate, but I’m not going to jump up and down about his 50% shooting on twos. For the record: James is shooting 3-for-8 on triples in Marquette’s last four games, and that’s 37.5%… and that’s because he missed his one attempt against the Badgers. If that keeps up, he’s 100% fulfilling his part of the issue here.
As mentioned earlier, Sean Jones has not shown to be carrying his side of the equation as a Big East caliber point guard. However, with his shoulder injury, I don’t want to completely shut the door on the chance that the pair of them ends up working out at the position.
I think we can easily say that Nigel James improved on his position from December, ultimately taking home the trophy as the best freshman in the Big East this past season. Sean Jones went down for the year just a few games after I wrote the December check-in, which left Marquette without a backup point guard because Tre Norman was absolutely not a real option here, just like I didn’t suggest he would be back in September. Massive success in the James department, but “there is a backup point guard” never happened on a season-long level.
—If the light suddenly goes on for Tre Norman, that changes the rotation depth on the team and gives Shaka the Good Problem of finding minutes for everyone.
Steal rate, way up. Offensive rating, way up. Turnover rate? Also way up, but that’s a bad way up. Norman’s minutes are pretty much exactly where they were last season, and after just four against the Badgers, I think we can call this one a failure.
Norman’s Offensive Rating was just 84.2 during Big East play, which is worse than it was both overall and in league competition in his first two years at Marquette. He played a career low 8.2 minutes per game overall and in Big East play and a career low total of 246 minutes. His turnover rate actually got worse in Big East play, as he finished at a career worst 26.5% overall….. and 27.8% in regular season conference games.
There is a long conversation to be had about exactly what went wrong between Tre Norman coming in as a top 100 prospect and somehow playing worse and worse as his career went on.
—If what Zaide Lowery did at the end of last season was him making a jump, I wonder if he’s ready to make a leap this year.
Lowery averaged 5.3 points and 3.7 rebounds in just short of 18 minutes a game, and he knocked down just under 47% of his three-pointers.
Lowery had an offensive rating of 130.6 and a PORPAGATU! of 2.2.
Marquette was +8.6 per 100 possessions on offense with Lowery on the floor, and +2.9 per 100 possessions on defense against top 150 teams and outside of garbage time.
Right now:
8.9 points and 3.2 rebounds in just over 24 minutes a game, but shooting 31.7% from behind the three-point line. That’s 14.7 and 5.3 per 40 minutes, while his end of season pace last year was 11.8 and 7.1 per 40 minutes.
He has an offensive rating of 106.3 and a PORPAGATU! of 1.3.
Marquette is -1.7 per 100 possessions on offense and a +22.8 per 100 possessions on defense with Lowery on the floor compared to when he’s on the bench against top 150 opponents.
No, he’s not the same player he was at the end of last season, but given those defensive numbers, you have to keep Lowery on the court….. although Shaka Smart did just pull him out of the starting lineup this weekend. Probably a bad sign for what the staff thinks about what Lowery is doing out there.
YIKES. Zaide Lowery played 12 more minutes for Marquette after I wrote this, all off the bench against Purdue. Here’s how bad things were between him and Shaka Smart at that point: Lowery subbed out of that game with MU down 59-33 at Mackey Arena and 11:26 left to go and did not return. He was 0-for-4 from the field, with three of them coming behind the arc, along with two turnovers and two fouls, and that was it for him in Milwaukee.
—If the whole team can just avoid those nicks and dings and nagging injuries that don’t actually prevent them from playing, the ones that that eat away at their effectiveness, stuff like “Hey, Stevie Mitchell needed hip surgery, who knew,” I think that’s a net positive for the season.
Sean Jones missed six games with a shoulder thing that kept him in a sling that was immobilizing his arm. Yeah, I know my point was about tiny, slightly bothersome injuries, but when you’ve already lost six games to an actual injury, that means you’re way behind on the “avoid small injuries” front.
Chase Ross had an elbow issue for a good long while and then had his shoulder get separated late in the season. Ben Gold had a leg/ankle/foot thing that had him miss a game and then turn up at the end of year banquet on crutches. Damarius Owens finished the season wearing a mask because of an inadvertent face smash from Zuby Ejiofor. Sean Jones missed most of the rest of the season after I wrote that in December. Royce Parham missed a game with back spasms.
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Things happen, it’s silly to think everyone will be 100% from November to April. Marquette also didn’t have much in the way of margins this season, and the parade of Things ate away at whatever there was.
—If Royce Parham and Damarius Owens are ready to be load bearing rotation pieces as sophomores this year, that raises Marquette’s ceiling.
All due respect to Royce Parham, I’m not even going to bother looking to see if he counts here. Damarius Owens absolutely does not count since he played three minutes against Valparaiso after gettin yanked for maybe the single worst loose ball/rebounding foul I’ve ever seen in my life, much less his DNP against Oklahoma. This one’s a miss barring one of the greatest single player in-season turnarounds in recorded history.
Parham went through the roof not long after this, which is great news, but we weren’t really worried about him. Owens ended up averaging 5.7 points and 3.2 rebounds in 18.8 minutes per game in Big East play. This is a turnaround from where we were in December, but I can’t give this full freight as a win. That’s mostly because the sudden boost in Owens’ playing time is 100% related to Zaide Lowery merely not being there any more.
—If at least two of these four available freshmen pop as rotation guys right away, I think that’s a win for the Golden Eagles.
Safe to say that Nigel James and Adrien Stevens qualify here. Michael Phillips and Josh Clark are nowhere close to being a rotation guy, and I wrote the original piece before we knew that Ian Miletic would be redshirting this season, but I only called for 2 out of 5, and we’re getting that.
While I think we can check this box as a success, I think it’s probably a bad thing for Marquette as a whole that both James and Stevens were in the starting lineup against Wisconsin…. and maybe worse that Stevens led the Golden Eagles in scoring.
Nothing new to say here!
—If someone — I don’t care who! — establishes themselves as the go-to scorer that every team needs, that’s going to make things a lot easier on Marquette night in and night out.
If Chase Ross is the top scorer in the entire Big East, I guess he qualifies, right?
Hard to say that he’s the go-to scorer when he’s had the ball in his hands each of the three times that Marquette has failed to get a shot off to win at the end of regulation, though.
About a month after I wrote that the December check on the Ifs, I wrote this Film Session piece because MU completely blew a chance to shoot to force overtime against Villanova. That was amidst Chase Ross’ completely collapse as an elite scorer in the Big East, so we can’t even claim that as an upside.
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I think by the end of the year that Marquette fans would largely say the answer to this question was Nigel James, but it took way too long for that establishment to happen after Ross fell apart. I think we all feel better about the answer being James for November 2026, but I think we end up with this one being a miss overall for the 2025-26 season.
—If all of this comes together into at least a tournament bid, then that proves that Shaka Smart’s refusal to use the portal and rely exclusively on internal development is a viable option going forward.
According to BartTorvik.com’s TeamCast function, we can see where a team projects to end up in the NCAA tournament based on what the computers are saying about how each individual game in the future will go.
Marquette currently projects to finish 7-13 in the Big East, 12-19 overall, and end up as the 90th team outside the bubble. If you’re saying “aw, jeez, that’s bad,” it’s not. If the tournament started on Tuesday night, Marquette would be 110 spots outside the bubble.
Marquette finished exactly 7-13 in Big East play and their conference tournament loss dropped an extra loss on them to get to 12-20. That landed them as the 79th team outside the tournament in the Torvik projections. That’s not a good thing, even if it’s better than 90th.
Let’s add it up:
Out of the 15 Ifs that I offered up back in September, I’m counting 12 as obvious failures here in June, and if you want to throw the Parham/Owens option on top of the 12 as the 13th failure, that’s fine by me. There were only nine in December when the season was very clearly off the rails already! That’s not good, although in defense of counting up nine in December, in retrospect, the Zaide Lowery thing was already in progress to switching to a failure, we just didn’t know it yet. Given that some things shifted over to failures from neutral at worst from December, it’s kind of a miracle that Marquette started to look like a much more competent team once the calendar switched to 2026….. but we already talked a lot about that.
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