For the first time in Shaka Smart’s tenure, Marquette played exhibition games as opposed to the closed-door scrimmages that have been staples the past 5 seasons. And not only did Marquette play exhibitions, it did so against D1 opponents, making them significantly more interesting for us not just from a viewability standpoint, but from a projection standpoint as well.
You see, every season I compile what the best pundits and models have to say about where they project Marquette and other Big East teams to end up the upcoming season, as a way to put some numbers and intelligence into what is mostly blind conjecture. But even the best models and pundits are basing their hypotheses off of numbers from previous seasons. As much as I rely on them and think they are an extremely valuable foundation, there can and will be outliers.
Which is why I was so intrigued by the exhibitions. Green Bay isn’t projected to be a powerhouse low/mid major, but getting to go on the road and face live opposition sure beats an in-house scrimmage. And then hosting Michigan State, projected to be a top-10 team by most models, would serve as a true test of what we might expect to see as Marquette’s rotation and style against upper-echelon opponents.
Granted, I was very vocal in my qualification of the results before the results of the scrimmage came in. I did not want to overreact in either direction, should Marquette look really good or really bad. We’ve seen outlier exhibition scores before and none of the coaches would be acting as if this was an elimination game in March, so the player selections would be a bit different.
And then Marquette beat Green Bay 87-60, building a small halftime lead into a mammoth 27-point margin in the 2nd half. Obviously better than losing, but without a video stream to validate the box score, and a late push to widen the final gap, I nodded serenely and moved on pretty quickly
The Michigan State result, on the other hand, was a bit more difficult to suppress. I didn’t get a chance to watch it in real time, but following the live stats and then hearing others’ reactions, the general consensus was that this was a relatively poor Nigel James game, and still resulted in Marquette beating a team ranked 6th in the AP pre-season poll by 7, leading for 37 of the 40 minutes.
Again, I vowed to not overreact to a game that isn’t real, but I would be lying if I said this game didn’t have me thinking that I am underselling the quality of this Marquette team. If you can beat an Izzo coached team comfortably while committing 24 turnovers, even in a meaningless friendly, that means something. Not everything, but something.
And sure enough, the GOAT himself Ken Pomeroy has come through with a blog on how much meaning the meaningless exhibitions have. And it’s more than I thought!
Read the whole thing. It’s fairly short but packed with insight that my selected quotes just won’t fully convey.
https://kenpom.substack.com/p/exhibition-madness
To me, this is the piece that I will take away.
Coaches in college don’t treat the games as lightly as NFL or NBA preseason games. Rotations are “real” and results don’t variate much from what KenPom’s seen in the first week of the season. So while winning (or losing) a game in week one isn’t a cause for cutting down the nets (or firing the coach), if that result variates widely from the expectations, then winning (or losing) a preseason exhibition should have almost as much meaning as that.
For us and Marquette, I haven’t publicly written what my projections are, but 30ish in the country and a low-single digit seed (7/8/9) is about where I’d set the expectation. A tournament team, a top-6 Big East team, but still a relatively young team without a ton of depth.
And that’s the thing that I will say has changed the most with these exhibitions. I don’t think Marquette will be better than Michigan State. I don’t think this is a top-10 team this season. I’ll still be ecstatic with a Sweet-16 trip. But the depth looks to be something of a plus, rather than a negative.
Some additional notes from my watch of the MSU game.
- Josh Clark had a few fun moments as a freshman, but even a GPS couldn’t help him navigate in the halfcourt last season. I figured he’d play token minutes this year, but have revised that considerably based on the 2 exhibitions. He isn’t winning any awards, but he’s at or above replacement level and I won’t have to hold my breath when he’s on the floor. He played 10 minutes against MSU, and the consensus was that he played quite well. Once more, 10 fine to decent minutes from Clark was not something I imagined possible as recently as 2 weeks ago.
- Shooting has a lot of variability form game to game so I won’t call this a great shooting team just yet, but generally speaking coming into the season, it was safe to assume Marquette would not be a great shooting team from 3. Adrien Stevens has high potential and Michael Phillips has a gorgeous stroke, but the rest of the pieces were either known and underwhelming, or unknown and not terribly promising. And yet Marquette went 23/42 (54.8%) from distance in the two exhibitions, with serious contributions from the bench pieces like Michael Phillips (4/7) and Alex Egbouno (3/5). Once more, while I still wouldn’t call shooting a strength just yet, but I’m much more open into believing that the pieces are better than I gave them credit for.
- Freshman contributions are fairly rare under Shaka. In his first 5 seasons at Marquette, there have only been 4 true freshman to play 40% of available minutes. Kam Jones in 2022. Chase Ross in 2023. And then Nigel and Adrien last season. So I go into most years expecting freshmen to be deep bench guys, as that baseline has been true for most. This year’s crop is no different. When I went through my minutes projection a week ago, I had Alex Egbuno, Ethan Johnston, Nash Walker and Ian Miletic combining for less than 10 minutes a game this year. While Nash and Ian haven’t featured much, that projection has already been altered for Alex and Ethan. In their respective roles, it feels like they already slot in seamlessly, able to play with the top of the rotation as well as with the other bench pieces. I still don’t think either cracks 10 minutes a game, but the fact I have them combining for 15+ now is a testament to the facts from this past week. I do think they see real court minutes.
- The free throw shooting is going to drive us nuts.
- Adrien Stevens is going to surprise everyone. He was very good last season, but he’s handling the ball a lot more, taking more off the dribble shots and generally looking like he took the freshman to sophomore year leap. I may have underestimated him.
- I don’t know if Damarius Owens starts all season, but I do think having Nolan Minessale either as a 6th man or in the starting lineup gives Marquette room for error from that wing spot. Whether riding the hot hand or optimizing for O/D, Owens and Minessale will play 40+ combined most nights.
- One last time, if Marquette can win a game where Nigel commits 8 turnovers on 40% shooting, it changes what I thought the floor of this team is. I don’t think the TOs are anything but a blip for Nigel and that should be a scary thought for all opposing Big East coaches.
After all that, I still think Marquette ends up in the 22 to 32 range this season. I still don’t think it gets a protected seed. I don’t believe it will be cutting down any Big East nets. I have a firm basis in reality and have net let two unofficial scores radically upend my priors.
But I do feel significantly more confident that the bottom won’t fall out like it did last season. I’m even open to the idea that I should be willing to raise the ceiling, not just the floor.
We will all find out together over the nest 5 months. But these exhibitions have also served to build up a real excitement in the program that’s difficult to muster after a difficult season. I can’t wait to watch.
MSU Highlights
MSU Full Game
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Super excited to get our first addition of the year!
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