Court Report: How Marquette became one of college basketball's best teams despite shunning transfer portal
Marquette had everyone fooled after refusing to promise NIL money to transfers. "Hell no, we ain't doing that," Shaka Smart said
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Marquette had everyone fooled after refusing to promise NIL money to transfers. "Hell no, we ain't doing that," Shaka Smart said
By Matt Norlander
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A big night in Milwaukee awaits Wednesday. The 11th-ranked Golden Eagles of Marquette host No. 16 Xavier at 7 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network with sole possession of first place in the Big East on the line.
Not bad for a team that was picked ninth in its league by media and coaches alike. Here's how Shaka Smart's worked his way to almost certainly winning Big East Coach of the Year.
There are just a handful of high-major programs that did not add a Division I transfer last offseason. Most of them (UCLA, Indiana, Michigan State, Iowa) were given benefit of the doubt in the preseason and projected to be NCAA Tournament teams. Not Marquette. After making a surprise run to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 9 seed in Year 1 under Smart, the program lost four of its top six scorers. Marquette was young, but Smart and his staff went into last spring like almost every other coaching staff in college basketball: prepared to scour the portal and court a couple of players.
Then, the news of Nijel Pack's $800,000 NIL deal to go to Miami dropped, and it changed everything.
"When the news came out about [Pack] going from Kansas State to Miami, that was a watershed moment in transfer recruiting in our sport," Smart told CBS Sports. "It completely altered what other transfers wanted."
Marquette was at different stages of recruiting four transfers. And practically overnight, the tone and expectations of those recruitments changed, Smart told me. He didn't like what he was hearing and quietly abandoned those recruitments — and stopped recruiting D-I transfers altogether last spring.
"We made the decision: Hell no, we ain't doing that," Smart told CBS Sports. "First of all, it's illegal, but we're not prioritizing some guy that hasn't worn a uniform over Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro."
One of the guys Marquette was talking to wound up in the Pac-12. Two more found spots elsewhere in the Big East and another is now in Conference USA.
"You ain't getting a lot of these guys unless they're getting some sort of bag," Smart said. "Number one, we weren't in position to do that. Number two, we're not comfortable doing that. Number three, we didn't want to ever prioritize some random guy from the Mountain West Conference over our current players. That's ludicrous to me."
Marquette did bring one transfer aboard: Zach Wrighstil. He was an NAIA player a year ago who won a championship with Loyola New Orleans. He's out for the season with an injury. Marquette is doing this without a single transfer playing a role.
The Golden Eagles are 20-6 and might wind up with their best NCAA Tournament seed in a decade. When I spoke to Smart, he was clear about the benefit of transfers, but for this team? He wasn't getting involved with the chaos of guys asking for NIL money up front in a quick-changing transfer portal world.
"If we can bring in a transfer that makes sense for us that we think is a cultural fit for us, and he really wants to be at Marquette and be part of something bigger than himself, great. Let's do that," Smart said. "But if some guys try to come in here for a straight transaction, what can you do for me? What can I do for you? Yeah, we're good."
The biggest reason for MU's big season is the inherent belief in this roster. Easy to say now, sure, but I saw Smart on the recruiting trail last summer and he was quietly confident then that his team would be better than people thought. He was right. Marquette is loaded with sophomores, six of them in fact (some two-year guys, some "COVID" sophs). The basis of Smart's bet on his team would be that those six guys would collectively improve significantly enough to keep them in the top half of the Big East. They've exceeded expectations.
Kolek, Ighodaro, Olivier Maxence-Prosper, Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell and David Joplin are the team's six top scorers and average 68.0 of Marquette's 81.2 points per game. There'd be a seventh sophomore in this mix, if not for injury: Emarion Ellis had knee surgery in August that's kept him out.
Smart knows he'll utilize the portal again eventually, and he heaped praise on his Big East brethren, like Ed Cooley, who've become portal maestros.
"The great thing about coaching is everyone can kind of do it their way," he said. "Ed has, I would guess, been really choosy about, OK, who do I bring in? How do they fit? And how will they be with us? And then he's coached the heck out. So I'm not saying ours is the only way. I'm just saying that's the way that makes sense to me at Marquette in our current situation."
Kolek, Ighodaro, Olivier Maxence-Prosper, Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell and David Joplin are the team's six top scorers and average 68.0 of Marquette's 81.2 points per game. There'd be a seventh sophomore in this mix, if not for injury: Emarion Ellis had knee surgery in August that's kept him out.
Smart knows he'll utilize the portal again eventually, and he heaped praise on his Big East brethren, like Ed Cooley, who've become portal maestros.
"The great thing about coaching is everyone can kind of do it their way," he said. "Ed has, I would guess, been really choosy about, OK, who do I bring in? How do they fit? And how will they be with us? And then he's coached the heck out. So I'm not saying ours is the only way. I'm just saying that's the way that makes sense to me at Marquette in our current situation."
Smart told me that was the moment that the team built upon — before they ever played a game.
"Our guys have played with that edge all year long," he said.
The Golden Eagles look to avenge their Jan. 15 loss versus Xavier tonight. There's nothing wrong with maximizing the portal to flip a team's potential, but Smart's proven you can still get it done the way teams were built for decades and decades.
"Other people ended up with the transfers, but that didn't mean that they got $100,000," he said.
And none of those teams have a record or ranking as good as Marquette midway through February.
