Chase is on the case

After severely rolling his ankle against Iowa State, which forced him to miss most of the game and leave Ames in a walking boot, Marquette had listed Chase Ross as doubtful for Saturday’s tilt with Wisconsin in their game notes published on Thursday.

So you’ll imagine my shock when I opened my phone midway through the second half and not only saw Chase filling up the boxscore, he was already leading Marquette in minutes played. Sure enough, he ended up with 2 steals and 8 rebounds in a team leading 36 minutes.

But as @n8quij on Twitter has been adeptly saying for months, taking after a Paw Patrol character with the same name, Chase is on the case.

Next level

Chase has been labeled a very good defender for years, but this season, he’s taken his usually disruptive self and amplified it to another level. He’s averaging a career high in steals per game, and for a stat that’s even better, is up to 4.9% in steal rate, meaning almost 5% of Marquette’s defensive possessions when he’s on the floor end with a steal from Chase. To put that in context, since 2008, no Marquette player has been over 4.5% (Jae Crowder at 4.3%).

It’s early in the season, sure, but I think even that eye-popping stat doesn’t do him justice. Take a look at this play from the Wisconsin game, which ends in Chase being called for a (non-existent) foul, so won’t go in the stat box as anything positive.

When I was watching the full game on Sunday morning, I couldn’t get this play out of my head. It was the perfect illustration of why he’s so special.

For starter’s when the play begins to develop, Chase is nowhere close to the action, he’s guarding his man at the top of the arc, but the ball has his full attention.

From here, Kam does a great job of recognizing the ball was coming, and walls up the driving lane. But watch how even before the Wisconsin dribbler gets close to being doubled, Chase’s body is already leaning towards the action.

The defense from Ben and Kam was excellent, it’s not like they needed help to stop the action. But what Chase sniffed out was that Kam and Ben’s positioning meant the UW guard would likely need to dump the ball behind him. With the shot clock in single digits, Chase went to a Vegas action, as Shaka referred to it, leaving his man open and gambling to add another body on the trap.

There was plenty of risk involved, as Klesmit burned Marquette from deep all game, but Tre and Caedin immediately recognize they are needed, and start covering for both players on the perimeter.

Chase stuffs him like a turkey, but is called for a foul. All in the span of 2 seconds. This combination of speed and IQ is what makes Ross such an alluring next level prospect.

I have been saying for years (particularly with Jajuan Johnson), steals and steal rates are not a great indicator of good defense. If you gamble 5 times and connect once you may have an elite steal number, but you’ve left your team at a disadvantage, and may be giving up more points than you are helping to put up.

Chase is not that at all. He’s way more aggressive than any MU player I can remember, yes, but his ability to cover multiple players is NBA level. And don’t take that one play as the end all be all.

Watch in awe as Chase makes a play no one else can make on this team, maybe in this league.

It’s not just how high up he gets to contest the shot, but the awareness to head for the corner once Kam tags in, as well as the speed to get anywhere close to the shooter. I mean it, watch that again because once was not enough. I’m on my 25th viewing. Make that 26th.

Team Results

Of course, in each of the examples I highlighted, it wasn’t just Chase doing it all on his own. This team is phenomenal at covering for each other and switching on to the area of need. There’s a reason it ranks 12th in KenPom for defensive efficiency, and 6th in turnover percentage.

But when focusing on just turnovers, Chase is probably the biggest reason the totals are as high as they have been to date. Watch him on any given possession and he’s usually hunting for an opportunity to attack. He’s constantly probing the perimeter and the lane, confident he has the athleticism and skill to recover on his man.

If you break down Hoop-Explorer the stats vs top-100 teams this season, you can see that Marquette’s defense forces turnovers on 24.5% of possessions when Chase is in the game, compared to only 15.4% when he’s off.

Some of this is due to him playing heavy minutes with experienced veterans in the starting lineup, but if you looks at Marquette’s splits with its other elite defender in Stevie Mitchell, there is no similar broad gap in turnover rate.

Shaka’s defensive philosophy may no longer be havoc in the sense there is constant full court press, but it is still one of violence and forcing teams to turn it over more than they usually do. And this 2025 Marquette team currently has the best turnover rate of any Marquette team in the KenPom era, going back to 1997.

And one more note about the value of the kind of turnover Chase helps to create. Live ball turnovers are those like steals, where the whistle doesn’t blow and opponents don’t have time to reset. These are a huge boon for an offense, because it kickstarts transition opportunities against unbalanced defenses.

Per CBB Analytics, Marquette is scoring 1.28 points per possession that starts with a live ball turnover. The more incredible part is that 18.5% of all its offensive possessions start this way, 130 overall through 10 games. That puts Marquette in the 99th percentile nationally.

Conclusion

Iowa State was the worst game to date for Marquette in terms of forcing turnovers. Some of that was Iowa State is ridiculously good. Some of that was Chase only played 10 minutes and left injured.

When Marquette is at its best defensively, it is rotating with quickness, and forcing teams to turn the ball over at elevated rates, which helps cover for some of the rebounding and rim protecting limitations. And no one on the team is better at that than Chase Ross.

Oh, and because it’s too good to not watch again, there is no better example of Ross’ superhuman athletic ability than this putback attempt at the end of the game. If this happened in a video game it would be too unbelievable.

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