If you are reading this blog, you have probably related a bit too much with his A-tier Tweet at some point.
In the moment, Marquette’s result affect my mood, my appetite and pretty much the rest of my day. It’s probably unhealthy, but it’s the truth.
And yet as time progresses, I find that the general ups and downs of a given season are usually replaced by the foggy memories we hold on to, whether good or bad. Which is weird right. I can spend a whole week riding high after a big win, and 3 years later all I’ll remember was the bad result at the end of the season.
So in order to best capture the vibes of any given week, I figured I’d start a running log using the least emotional measurement everyone uses. KenPom. I’ve taken the Adjusted Efficiency Margin he basis his ratings on from every Monday back through 2017 in order to give us some context.
This Year
Even though this season is already 11 weeks old, and each week has felt like a fresh new hell, Marquette somehow managed to twist the knife a little more after an 0-2 week with losses to St. John’s and DePaul.
St. John’s was always a bad matchup with their size inside, so this was going to be a penciled in loss even in the best of seasons, but something about the way they were able to play their deep bench almost the whole first half, and then run the lead up to 20+ once their starters played in the 2nd half, made it feel particularly embarrassing. Capped off by this play.
Sure, props to Zuby for the effort, but this is mostly about MU. Bad turnover, worse response. Just sad all around.
And then the DePaul first half felt like a bit of catharsis, with the offense creating great looks over and over against a great D, building up am 8-point lead at halftime. Only to lose the lead in the first 80 seconds, seeing DePaul push their lead to 15 with 5 minutes left before a late rally made the score respectable. Again, it isn’t the loss in and of itself that was so painful, it was the way MU married a brilliant first half with an atrocious 2nd.
From a numbers perspective, Marquette moved down 0.69 points in AdjEM for a new low this season.
After a few weeks of stasis, Marquette has learned it had not found rock bottom just yet.
NCAA Tournament Odds
LOL, remember when I thought this was worth tracking? Marquette has to win the Big East Tournament, so basically 0%.
Player Impact
To make up for removing the NCAA Tourney section, here’s a new part, updating the player performances as measured by Hoop-Explorer’s Player Impact grade in my 2026 dashboard.
Although it is a bit of damning with faint praise, Damariu Owens had his best 2-game stretch of his career last week.
He looks like someone that isn’t playing with a lot more confidence at this point, and is providing a glimpse into what made him Shaka’s highest rated recruit coming out of high school. Let’s see if that momentum can carry over.
Shaka’s Tenure
Of course, even though this is meant to highlight a given week’s ups and downs, I still want to throw some context in there. Here’s a look at how Marquette has graded out in KenPom each week of Shaka’s tenure.
(The horizontal “Top XX” lines are set not at any given year, but at what the averages for the 10th, 30th and 50th ranked teams are.)
Marquette is currently at the lowest point in Shaka’s tenure by almost 4 points.
Program History
And going back a bit further than that…
(The horizontal “Top XX” lines are set not at any given year, but at what the averages for the 10th, 30th and 50th ranked teams are.)
As of 1/19/26, this is currently the lowest point in recent Marquette history. That low point was 4.91, and this team is sitting at 4.28.
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