Court Report: How Marquette became one of college basketball’s best teams despite shunning transfer portal

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.”

In reflecting back to last spring, Smart said it reached a surreal point where his staff was getting approached by agents and all too casually being asked if they would match outlandish NIL figures. 

“The NCAA has really mangled these rules,” Smart said. “The way that’s been viewed by the NCAA has even changed a couple of times since then (summer of 2021). It’s like an alternate universe. Like, we’re getting calls from agents, saying, ‘Hey, you can be involved with this guy for this amount of money?’ But again, I don’t pass judgment on it. It’s recruiting now and 2023 transfer recruiting. And that’s why we didn’t take any.”

Back in October, Kolek made headlines with a two-word response to Marquette’s preseason projection in the Big East.

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.

How WAC is handling NMSU ending its season

The ugly story out of New Mexico State led to something ultra-rare in college sports: a program shutting down mid-season. After allegations of heinous abuse by three NMSU players against one of their teammates was disclosed via a police report, NMSU chancellor Dan Arvizu halted the program indefinitely and put the men’s basketball coaching staff on paid administrative leave. On Tuesday, first-year coach Greg Heiar was fired amid an ongoing investigation by the university.

The WAC is not conducting a separate investigation, commissioner Brian Thornton told CBS Sports. 

“We deemed this as an institutional issue,” he said. “We will support their investigation if needed.”

Thornton also added: “Our responsibility as administrators or coaches is to protect the total student-athlete experience. The last four days have been extremely hard because, as a former player and coach, I know the impact that a positive experience can have on the future of a young person. College is supposed to be hard, but not dangerous. The unfortunate situation at New Mexico State should serve as a reminder for all of us involved in collegiate athletics to put the mental and physical well-being of our athletes first.”

With NMSU’s six remaining games taken off the schedule, it also left the WAC in a predicament from a competition standpoint. Should those six games be forfeits or no-contests? Thornton said WAC athletic directors, in coordination with the league office, opted to log each remaining game as an NMSU forfeit, giving teams like Cal Baptist, Abilene Christian, Tarleton State and others victories. 

“The reason we did that was because the teams that were left without games, it would’ve adversely penalized those teams for an opportunity they no longer had,” Thornton said.

But there’s a twist. Last summer, I reported how the WAC was transforming how it seeds its basketball tournaments. The teams with the top 12 records qualify (NMSU had the worst league record, which made the decision to stop playing less problematic), but instead of conference wins and losses determining seeding, a team’s overall performance against its entire schedule would act as arbiter. It incentivizes WAC teams to schedule quality teams and rewards them accordingly for performance. 

“There are different [game values], whether the game’s at home, on the road or a neutral site,” Thornton said of NMSU’s forfeits. “Since teams were not incurring any risk, we standardized the value to be what a home win would be. Part of what went into that was, New Mexico State had not won a road conference game, only won both its league games at home. A threshold needed to be created. At the end of the day, it wasn’t the other teams’ fault they didn’t get to play the game.”

The WAC considered giving full road value for schedule road games, but assigning home-win value to the forfeits seemed the fairest compromise.

“There’s no perfect solution,” Thornton said.

Go to the WAC’s official website and you’ll see its unconventional standings page, tallied numerically (WACPts), not by wins and losses. It’s called the Résumé Seeding System. Utah Valley is in a good race with Sam Houston State for the No. 1 seed in the WAC Tournament next month. 

“Protect not the best program, but protect the best résumé,” Thornton said.

An important detail: New Mexico State ending its season in mid-February did not change the order of the standings at all. This ensures the 12 WAC teams still playing will finish with 18 results. (For NCAA Tournament purposes, the selection committee will consider the six vanished New Mexico State games as no-contests, not forfeits.) 

Thornton said similar forfeit protocol was agreed to in the preseason, only if COVID was the reason. 

The idea is progressive, but debatable, and was the brainchild of Thornton and associate commissioner Drew Speraw. Feedback has been good, Thornton told me.

“The impression has been extremely positive,” he said. “We’re getting out of it what our goal was. We’re getting representation at the top as our best résumés are rising to the top. That’s evident based on the NET and based on the types of Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins certain institutions have had. If you win, the standings take care of itself.”

Thornton’s heard from coaching groups in other WAC sports and other basketball people in mid-major leagues, too. A new-age idea, and one that helps the WAC best seed its best teams — giving the conference its best chance at putting its strongest school in the NCAAs. 

But you still have to earn it. The automatic bid is going to the WAC Tournament winner, no matter if that winner comes from the 1-line or is a 12-seed. This is good news for the WAC, which rates as the 11th strongest league this season, per KenPom and the NET. That’s up from 15th a year ago and a massive uptick from the previous two years, when it was 23rd and 24th out of 32 conferences. 

Longest gaps between No. 1 rankings in history

Football fans in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, are accustomed to seeing their Crimson Tide poised with a “1” next to their name on an annual basis. But in men’s hoops? Not exactly, though Nate Oats is changing those expectations. On Monday, Alabama reached No. 1 for the first time since January of 2003 — the only other season the Tide hit the top of the hoops polls. In fact, Bama is the first school since Ohio State in 2010-11 to have its men’s hoops and football teams reach No. 1 in the same academic year.

You might be thinking: That 20-year gap between No. 1 rankings is long, but where does it stand in AP Top 25 history?

Per our CBS Sports research team, Alabama’s 20-season/1,049-week drought between its journeys to No. 1 is the 15th-longest wait.

Here are the longest gaps betwixt trips to the top. Coincidentally, the second-longest was achieved earlier this season. Fittingly enough, it happened to the team Alabama beat soon thereafter — and leapfrogged this week to secure the top spot: Houston.

@ me

The Court Report’s mailbag! Find me, toss a Q and I’ll answer some each week.

Tim’s tweet above’s about North Carolina. And the answer is no. There has never been a preseason No. 1 team that failed to make the NCAA Tournament. The Tar Heels are flirting with notoriety. My guess here on Feb. 15: UNC dodges infamy and is a No. 11 seed on Selection Sunday.

Yes, the NET rankings are fluid and literally updating daily. A clearer illustration of a team’s quality comes with more data (read: games played), so it stands to reason that schools will rise or fall as the the season goes along. You get credit, or debits, for beating or losing to what a team grows into, not a snapshot of what it was.

I tend to be a romantic optimist when it comes to these things … and I can’t say it’s on the table. The only remote possibility is if North Texas makes the C-USA title game with a 27-6 record vs. D-I opponents and loses CLOSE to FAU. Even then, so hard to see. FAU, however, I think is getting in with room to spare at four or fewer losses, no questions asked. The Owls are 22-2 vs. D-I and continue to rank top-20 in results-based metrics.

Ben is asking about Miami (21-5), which I’d have as either the last No. 4 seed or first No. 5 seed right now. Four regular-season games left: vs. Wake, @ Virginia Tech, vs. FSU, vs. Pitt. If Miami goes 3-1 in that stretch and makes the ACC semis, it’s probably playing the first weekend of the NCAAs in Orlando, then feeding into Louisville or New York if it makes the Sweet 16.

Even with his life on the line, Gary Parrish could not stop Zach Edey once in 100 possessions of one-on-one. Thank you for the laughs and the visual.

Final shots

• Pitt and Northwestern aren’t ranked? Seems wrong. I’d have taken out Iowa State, TCU this week and put the Panthers and Wildcats in.
• Reminder: Saturday at 12:30 p.m. ET on CBS, the once-a-year in-season bracket reveal of the top 16 teams, per official selection committee decision. Plenty of intrigue over who should be on the 3- and 4-lines at this stage.
• Louisville is raising a banner Saturday. It will be for finishing No. 1 in the 2012-13 Coaches Poll, what with this being the 10-year anniversary of the 2012-13 team winning the national championship (that has since been vacated by the NCAA). No acknowledgement of the achievement exists anywhere at the KFC Yum! Center. I’m told the NCAA shot down this idea in 2017 but reconsidered in the past year. The banner-raising will be ripe for ribbing, but at least it’s something to recognize that team. We all saw what happened.
• This is a crazy stat. Jesse Edwards also went for 18-and-16 on Tuesday vs. NC State.

• Coaching scuttlebutt: Cal, Stanford and Ole Miss have quietly been putting out feelers on potential replacements. Georgetown did informal temperature checks months ago.
• Few coaches are better in close endings than Ed Cooley. The Friars have won 70.5% of their games decided by five points or fewer in the past nine seasons. And in PC’s last 10 games that required overtime, the program is 9-1.
• An unprompted pitch for those who follow college sports year-round: I encourage you to subscribe to Extra Points, the daily college sports newsletter run by Matt Brown, a dapper man who specializes in crystallizing the nuance and minutiae on NCAA stories from a ground-level perspective. He recently laid out the realities of what awaits with the new NIL enforcement legislation that, to me, seems destined for problems.
• Just about every year there’s a power-conference team that lurks in the shadows for most of the first three months of the season, only to emerge in bracket forecasts about two weeks before Selection Sunday. My pick for this year’s dark-horse candidate is Wisconsin. The 15-10 Badgers are out of sight down at 77th in the NET, but a closer examination of UW’s schedule and dossier reveals winnable games and a top end of the résumé (5-6 in Q1, no bad losses) that could sneak ’em in.
• 16,777,216: What does that number signify? Per the Missouri Valley, it’s “how many win-loss combinations still exist” among the 24 league games left in the regular season. And this is why it’s always a jumble on the stumble into March. Sixteen-plus million. Never tell me the odds!
• Pac-12 scuttlebutt: Word is that a traditional non-sports streaming partner in play for the league’s forthcoming rights deal isn’t Amazon. And it isn’t Netflix. Could it be Peacock? Yep, but Apple TV+ is another one getting buzz. The conference, quizzically, released this no-new-news statement on Monday. San Diego State and SMU remain overwhelming favorites to get invites in the coming month(s).