October 31, 2025 | Andrei Greska | 0 Comments

Marquette Minutes Projections for 2026

Every single year, we as a collective fanbase pretty much forget what we spent 5 months discussing as soon as the ball is tipped. And rightfully so. Who cares what we thought might happen when we were bored at work in July. All that matters now are the games and the results.

But I try to make a point with this platform, and on Twitter, that those expectations and projections shouldn’t just be yeeted once the season start. They should be used as a foundation of the way we view the season. No, that doesn’t mean it’s “ok” if Marquette is bad simply because I thought they’d be bad. But rather, the level of my happiness or frustration will be based on what my pre-set expectation was.

Or at least try to keep that asterisk in mind, because it’s hard do so in the heat of a bad loss.

And so, as we’ve done in previous years, here is my attempt at projecting the minutes each player will average, as a way to set my baseline expectations for them individually, and how I think the team as a whole will play. (One additional caveat, using average minutes per game is not a great metric, as it is impacted by injury or DNPs, but the general point stands.)

2025 results

But before we go forward, I like to look back. I made these projections for last season’s team before we knew Al Amadou was redshirting for the season which may have bumped up my Royce Parham and Zaide Lowery numbers a bit, but this still works.

And what it shows is that I completely whiffed on Royce’s projection, undersold Jop’s contributions, and greatly overvalued Tre’s minutes, particularly as the backup PG. Take a look.

Outside of those egregious misses, I’m pretty happy with what my read of the team would be. There was a clear top 5 with a pretty big drop after that. There were 5 players who averaged 25+ minutes, and everyone else was at 16 or below. Again, this doesn’t make the results of the season less painful or whatever, but helps me going forward, knowing how to interpret some of the summer chatter.

2026 Minutes Projections

And so now, here’s how I see 2026’s minutes distribution playing out.

Some quick bullets about it:

I still think there is a clear 5, with 5 players at 24+ minutes, but I’m much less confident about it.
I originally had Caedin at 9 minutes, but keep bumping him up with what Shaka and Nevada have said
There are 2 freshmen I expect to be rotation mainstays in Nigel James (16 minutes) and Adrien Stevens (12 minutes). That feels risky, but with all the talk about playing with speed, and with the reports we’ve gotten this summer and fall, I feel pretty confident about it.
Tre losing minutes as a junior would be a departure from the trajectory we’ve seen from all the juniors the past 3 seasons, but I was burned once and will not touch the hot stove again.
Having all 40 point guard minutes distributed to players that played 0 minutes on the team last year is still my biggest hangup with the team. That’s a big ask.

Aggregate Projections

But wait, there’s more. Because I am but one idiot, my projections are of limited value. I believe in collective wisdom, so enlisted some other peeps to provide their subjective opinions as well. Here’s the color coded distribution.