We are counting down the days to the start of the college basketball season.
If you’re reading this on the day is was published, we have 47 days to the official start of College Basketball, and 36 days until we can see the team in action against K-State (presuming it’s televised).
The Full Non-Conference Schedule:
- October 23rd — at Kansas State (exhibition)
- October 29th — at UNLV (exhibition)
- November 3rd — vs Cleveland State
- November 6th — vs Saint Louis (in St. Louis)
- November 9th — vs SIU-Edwardsville
- November 15th — vs Marquette (in Chicago)
- November 18th — vs Alcorn State
- November 20th — vs Le Moyne
- November 24th — vs Evansville
- November 27th — vs Arkansas Pine Bluff
- December 1st — vs Pittsburgh (ACC-SEC Challenge)
- December 6th — vs Kansas (in Kansas City)
- December 12th — vs Nebraska (in Kansas City)
- December 18th — at Indiana
- December 20th — vs Illinois (in St. Louis)
- December 22nd — vs Chicago State
After the last few years of a poor lineup of Q4 games in the non-conference schedule, Missouri pulled a 180 and have schedule as well as anyone in the country. On top of playing Illinois and Kansas as previously scheduled, the Tigers are playing neutral court matchups against SLU, Marquette, Nebraska, and a road game at Indiana. There’s no question Dennis Gates stepped it up.
Let’s Meet: the Marquette Golden Eagles
Can you tell me the first co-educational Catholic university in the world?
That’s right, it’s the university founded in 1881 by the first Archbishop of Milwaukee, John Henni, Marquette University. From 1881 to 1907, it was known as Marquette College, and then switched to University, before moving to a coed student body in 1909.
They first fielded an athletics team in 1892, by catching onto the football craze sweeping the nation. The “Golden Avalanche” played until the 1960 season when the school gave up football to save money.
The Men’s basketball program started up in 1916, and have a National Championship in the 1977 season when Al McGuire led the Warriors (at the time they had a different mascot, but changed to the Golden Eagles in 1994) over the North Carolina Tarheels in the title game. They’ve also made the Final Four two other times, in 1974, and again 2003, under Tom Crean. That 2003 team was led by a guy by the name of Dwayne Wade, and defeated the 6th seeded Mizzou Tigers in the second round. They also claimed wins over the 2 seed Pitt Panthers, and the 1 seed Kentucky Wildcats, before bowing out so that team from Lawrence in the National Semi-finals.
From 68 to 83, the program made every NCAA Tournament except for two. But would go without until the 1993 Tournament when Kevin O’Neil got them back into the tournament after a 10 year absence. Tom Crean took over in 1999, and made five tournaments in his last 7 seasons, then Buzz Williams made five straight before missing in 2014, and then leaving for the Virginia Tech job. Steve Wojciechowski was there for seven seasons and could only manage two tournament appearances, before Shaka Smart took over in 2021.
Some of the ups and downs had to do with conference affiliation. Marquette was a long time independent before joining the Great Midwest Conference in the late 1980s. As the league expanded it became Conference USA, but they joined the Big East in 2005. From 2005 to 2013, the Big East was a weird mishmash league of teams with and without football, but in 2013 the non-football schools split off, and it took the conference a few years to really find it’s footing. Welcoming back UConn has helped a lot, and things are on very solid footing now.
Head Coach | Shaka Smart | 6th Season 110-61
Who doesn’t know Shaka Smart at this point? I’ve always liked Shaka, from his time at VCU, and even when he was at Texas. Honestly I was surprised he never got it going at Texas, but for whatever reason it never meshed for him there.
It didn’t take Shaka long to re-establish himself at Marquette however. He made the tournament in year one, and then secured a 2-seed in back to back seasons. Even though Crean has a Final Four, it’s Smart’s 2023 team which is tabbed as the best in KenPom history. That team finished the season ranked 10th overall int he analytics, finished as a 2 seed, and went 17-3 in the Big East, including going 2-1 against the eventual National Champion UConn Huskies.
The next season they mostly ran it back, and earned another two seed. They actually advanced further into the NCAA Tournament, they made it to the Sweet 16, but lost to that stupid NC State team who ended up in the Final Four despite wanting to fire their coach.
Things began to falter down the stretch the next season, as the Golden Eagles bowed out in the first round as a 7 seed. And then last season the bottom fell out. Unlike most programs, Smart had refused to use the transfer portal to replenish his talent, and the youth he’d recruited hadn’t quite panned out the way he had hoped. So after an the disappointing showing, Marquette dipped into the transfer portal to fix what ailed them a year ago.
Series History | Mizzou leads 5-4
I mentioned the 2003 game above, what I didn’t go into was how that game went. Sometimes it’s nice that YouTube exists, and the entire game is online there if you want to revisit. But basically Rickey Paulding was awesome, so was Arthur Johnson. But they didn’t get much help. After being down for most of the second half, including by as many as 10 points, Paulding hit a three with under a minute to play to tie the game at 78. Dwayne Wade scored to take the lead back, and Johnson calmly sank two free throws to send the game to overtime. In overtime the Marquette offense went nuclear, and the Tigers couldn’t keep up.
But they would get revenge six years later (to the day!) when DeMarre Carroll and Leo Lyons got more help from their teammates than Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews did from theirs. Mizzou would win that matchup 83-79.
Before that the Tigers split a home and away series in 1983 and 1984. They beat Marquette in the 1982 NCAA Tournament, when Ricky Frazier and Steve Stipanovich got the best of Doc Rivers squad. Yes when Doc was a player and not a recycled NBA coach.
They also played in 1978 twice, during the 1977-78 season and the 1978-79 season, Marquette won both. Then there were back to back wins for the Tigers in 1957.
For at least the last three seasons, Mizzou and Marquette have faced each other in an exhibition scrimmage. The results haven’t been known, so it’s nice to see the two programs facing each other when it counts.
What about the team now?
Marquette wasn’t awful awful last year, they just struggled to win games late. They only lost one game to a team outside the top 100, that was to Maryland, who early in the season wasn’t bad. That squad just got injured like crazy.
And their leading scorer was Nigel James, a freshman, and he’s back. James was a top 100 recruit out of New York City, and pretty quickly established himself as the go to scorer for a team looking for consistent scoring. Smart’s elite offenses of the previous three seasons went by the wayside, and James did his best to fill in the gaps.
Also back is third leading scorer Royce Parham, another former top 100 recruit who stood out in his sophomore season in the swing forward position. Adrien Stevens is another former top 100 recruit who played a lot as a freshman, and should be able to make an impact on the roster as a likely starter this year.
So three young and talented players who started 72 total games last season are back and figuring to take on their starting spots again this season. To supplement the talent, Smart dipped into the transfer portal and lured German big man Sananda Fru, from Louisville. Fru was a starter in 29 games for the Cards, and averaged a solid 9.0 points and 6.1 rebounds. He’s a skilled player who should slot right in as a starter at the five spot.
Also coming in is a physical wing, and a Wisconsin native, Nolan Minessale, who spent his first two seasons at St. Thomas University, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Minessale averaged nearly 20 points per game as a sophomore before transferring.
The Golden Eagles are ranked 29th in the early BartTorvik.com projections. At the very least they should be back in the NCAA Tournament conversation after a down season last year. At best they have the makings of a team who could challenge for a Big East title.