Four. That’s the number of transfers Marquette head coach Shaka Smart has recruited in his five years at the Big East School. While other schools start over year-after-year with new transfer classes, Smart has mostly avoided the transfer portal and continues running his program the old fashion way: developing guys over four years.<\/p>\n
The Golden Eagles set a program record of 29 wins in Smart’s second season in 2022-23, then followed it up by making it to the Sweet 16 the next season. After back-to-back years of earning a two-seed at the NCAA Tournament, Marquette fell down to Earth last year, going 23-11 and falling in the first round of the tournament. If the downward trend continues, will Smart and Marquette look towards the transfer portal, or will they stick to the course<\/a>?<\/p>\n There is some irony in the fact Smart has not brought in any transfers the last two seasons. That’s because going into his first season in Wisconsin, he brought in Tyler Kolek<\/a>, from George Mason, and Olivier-Maxence Prosper<\/a>, from Clemson, two freshman transfers that changed the trajectory of the program.<\/p>\n Both guys averaged over 12 points per game in 2022-23, putting the team on the national radar. Prosper’s breakout season led the junior to being the 24th overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft<\/a>. Meanwhile, Kolek’s 7.5 assists per game topped the Big East and were third in Division I, leading him to the All-American Third Team<\/a>. He returned for his senior season where he led the conference in assists again and increased his scoring to over 15 points per game. In the NCAA Tournament he scored 21 points against the No. 10 seed Colorado to send the Golden Eagles to their first Sweet Sixteen since 2013.<\/a><\/p>\n Looking back on that season, Smart pointed out the commitment from the returning players was key to making the next step in the program.<\/p>\n “The reason we won is because we chose to prioritize the guys who had worn the jersey that wanted to come back, which was everyone else who wasn\u2019t a senior,” he said in an interview from the summer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Marquette was just more and Kolek and Prosper. During Kolek’s senior year in 2023-24, the junior class consisted of key contributors that included Kam Jones<\/a>, David Joplin<\/a>, and Stevie Mitchell<\/a>. Jones led the team in scoring that year, then followed with an All-American season where he averaged 19 points per game this past season. Joplin and Mitchell each averaged over 10 points a game and helped Marquette finished fourth in the Big East.<\/p>\n Smart’s first recruiting class is gone. He enters a new era without a bona fide star like Kolek or Jones. Chase Ross<\/a> and Ben Gold<\/a> are the final two members of the Sweet Sixteen team that remain in the program. Both were starters last season. While Smart has not been active in the transfer portal, to his credit, no one from last year’s team entered the portal, giving him little need to go portal hunting.<\/p>\n Ross is the key here. Marquette needs a breakout season from him, and coaches around the league expect the same. On Tuesday, he was voted to the Preseason All-Big East First Team<\/a>. Showing flashes of offensive potential, he averaged over 10 points per game last year and over 36.5% from three. On defense, his 1.8 steals per game were fifth in the Big East.<\/p>\n Generally, Marquette’s success has relied on players making a jump their junior year. That narrows the scope onto Zaide Lowery<\/a> and Tre Norman<\/a>, who averaged 15 and eight minutes a game, respectively. Both guys played over 30 games and were a part of the rotation all season. The wildcard for this class is Sean Jones<\/a>, who missed all of last season after he tore his ACL in January of 2024. Marquette hopes at least two of these guys can step into full-time roles to provide some depth.<\/p>\n If Smart wants to continue avoiding the transfer portal and grow his team from within, he’s going to have to keep recruiting not just good players, but the right players who fit his system. That’s something that can be difficult.<\/p>\n Only two starters and two reserves averaged over 10 minutes per game in their return. That means the door is open for the young guys to get playing time and establish a role on the team. Marquette’s recruiting class of five players ranks 20th on 247 Sports’ Composite Rankings<\/a>. The class is led by a pair of top-100 four-star prospects in Nigel James jr.<\/a> and Adrien Stevens<\/a>. James should get reps as the backup point guard and Stevens is already getting comparisons to Mitchell<\/a>.<\/p>\n Winning solves all issues. Smart’s culture of winning has allowed guys to buy into the promise of growth. It’s easier to buy into a program when you have a real shot of winning the Big East. What happens if this team hangs around .500 all season and frustration begins to mount? All it takes is a few guys who are unhappy with their playing time to look elsewhere for opportunity. Plus with UConn, St. John’s, and even Creighton<\/a> at the top of the league, it is a lot to ask for an untested team.<\/p>\n On the flip side, if enough guys play to their potential and Marquette makes the tourney for the fifth straight year, Smart’s system will live to see another season.<\/p>\n \u00a9 Ken Blaze-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four. That’s the number of transfers Marquette head coach Shaka Smart has recruited in his five years at the Big East School. While other schools start over year-after-year with new transfer classes, Smart has mostly avoided the transfer portal and continues running his program the old fashion way: developing guys over four years. The Golden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5651,"featured_media":163736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,773],"tags":[1451],"class_list":["post-163564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-college-basketball","tag-marquette-golden-eagles"],"modified_by":"Jordan Pagkalinawan","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163564"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163737,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163564\/revisions\/163737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Can Marquette Continue to Avoid the Transfer Portal?<\/h2>\n
Smart has a small, but good, track record<\/h3>\n
The post-Kolek era begins<\/h3>\n
Will the lack of transfers hurt this year’s team?<\/h3>\n
What does the future hold?<\/h3>\n