First, some basics: Marquette men’s basketball went up to the Resch Center on Monday night for a public exhibition game against Green Bay, and came away with an 87-60 victory. The Green Bay box score for the game — and I have to use the Phoenix’s website because Marquette has actually deleted the listing from their schedule page — says there was 3,122 people in attendance. That’s in a building that has a Wikipedia-listed capacity of 9,729 for basketball, but 7,500 for end-stage concerts, and I mention that part because the end of the arena on the Green Bay bench end was in fact curtained off completely. Let’s call it half-full at best, and keep that thought in mind relative to the idea that it’s “good for the state” for Marquette to play Green Bay in a regular season game at Fiserv Forum. Was it an exhibition game? Yes. Green Bay also hosted Wisconsin back on October 15th and only drew 4,651 people. I rest my case, your honor.
Stat Leaders!
Marquette
Points: Nigel James, 18
Rebounds: Josh Clark, 6
Assists: Nigel James, 10
Blocks: Sananda Fru, 2
Steals: Nolan Minessale, 3
Minutes: Nigel James, 31
Green Bay
Points: Ahmere Carson, 29
Rebounds: Clarence Payia, 4
Assists: LeBron Thomas, 3
Blocks: Clarence Payia & Maruan Cicic, 1
Steals: Marcus Hall, Tadej Colnaric, & Ahmere Carson, 2
Four Factors
Marquette
Effective Field Goal Percentage: 73.5%
Turnover Rate: 22.4%
Offensive Rebounding Rate: 36.0%
Free Throw Rate: 49.0.%
Green Bay
Effective Field Goal Percentage: 46.9%
Turnover Rate: 20.9%
Offensive Rebounding Rate: 12.1%
Free Throw Rate: 38.8%
How about the 7 minute postgame press availability from Marquette head coach Shaka Smart?
Let’s address the Ahmere Carson of it all. Carson finished with 29 points, but he had 27 in the first half thanks to 10-for-10 shooting, which included five three-pointers. That means he went 1-for-4 from the field in the second half, missing his only three-point attempt of the final 20 minutes. If you watch Smart’s press availability, their concern with him going into the game was the ability get out in transition against them, and then he blew up shooting it instead. It sounds like the solution was to just start throwing different looks at Carson to make him uncomfortable, and it clearly worked. I enjoy a nice halftime adjustment, especially on a micro level like that.
This also means that the first half score was Marquette 43, Ahmere Carson 27, and Green Bay 11. Carson had eight of his 27 in the first five minutes of the game as Green Bay struck out to what would be their largest lead of the game, 10-4, with 17:38 left in the half. Marquette tied the game at 16 on an Adrien Stevens free throw with 13:35 left before intermission, then Stevens hit his second for a 17-16 lead, and MU would never trail again. The lead shift came in the middle of an 11-0 run by Marquette, and from the moment they tied it to the end of the game, MU outscored the Phoenix 71-44.
From the moment of the tie forward, Marquette won the rest of the first half 27-22 while Carson had 19 of his 27 in the first half. 27-3 against the rest of the team, though. It’s worth noting that Marquette was up 35-20 with 7:56 left after two Stevens freebies, a 31-10 run since GB’s largest lead. Yes, Green Bay went on an 18-8 run to the end of the half from there, but 17 of it was Carson.
At the end of the day, Marquette was presented with an unexpected challenge, pushed through it to hold an advantage anyway, and then when given a moment to discuss the challenge as a group, came up with a solution and fixed it for the rest of the game. Giving up 27 to one guy in 20 minutes isn’t a fun thing to do, but from a big picture perspective, I think they handled it well.
Random thoughts and ideas I had:
- Damarius Owens swapped with Nolan Minessale in the starting lineup after what we saw in the first two games in the Canada trip. Can’t really count the third one since Adrien Stevens missed that one with an illness. In the post-game, Shaka Smart said that Owens has been the player showing the biggest step forward in preseason practices, so the starting gig here was a reward for that. Owens has been challenged to play defense at a particular level in order to keep that job, so I’m not going to be too concerned with his line of two points, a rebound, and a steal in 18 minutes here, at least not yet.
- Sananda Fru looks like the real deal. Six points, four rebounds, a steal and two blocks in 23 foul-hampered minutes isn’t jump off the page stuff, but he moves incredibly well and is noticeably vocal on the court, particularly on the defensive end to communicate switches and screens and the like. When Nigel James can do stuff like 18 & 10 with four rebounds, two steals, and a block and it feels like he was quiet, Fru’s not going to be asked to carry a load that shows up on the stat sheet. Thus, it’s going to be the other stuff that makes him valuable to Marquette this season.
- And so, we should probably turn around right away and discuss his compatriot, Josh Clark. 20 minutes played, perhaps more because of foul trouble for both Fru and Royce Parham, six points, a team high six rebounds, two steals and a block. Do not get over your skis on this quite yet, as Green Bay had one guy with size to go against the 7’1” Clark, but the redshirt sophomore looked like he knew what he wanted to do/what he was supposed to do on a regular basis. That itself is a jump forward for him, and being aware of things at a better level is going to allow him to use his size and strength to a bigger advantage. Also: Smart spent at least two stretches of the game playing Fru and Clark together! I’m curious if that’s more about Parham’s foul troubles in this game, just a lineup laboratory thing in an exhibition game, or something that the Golden Eagles want to actually deploy regularly this year.
- I’ve brought up Royce Parham’s foul troubles in this game, and that’s putting it lightly. He picked up his second with 7:31 left in the first half, and Shaka Smart actually made him play through it for a while because his first had come at the 18:40 mark and Parham got pulled for a little while after that one. His third and fourth fouls are arguably worse situations. I was sure he was getting thrown out of the game for foul #3, as the in-arena replay made it clear that Parham had yanked a GB screener by the neck as he went around him to contest a corner three, but the refs left it at only a flagrant 1. His fourth foul came with 6:37 left and was the world’s most obvious hook & spin offensive foul that you’ve ever seen. I had a great view of it as he went baseline, and my reaction was “careful, Royce, that’s a whistle more often th—oh, there’s the whistle.” Like I said, very obvious. He finished with 14 points, four rebounds, and two assists in just 17 minutes, so the box score makes him look pretty great in limited minutes, but his decision making was all over the place here.
- Colin Porter played nine minutes here, the least total minutes out of anyone who appeared in the first half. That’s not terribly surprising given his August addition to the roster, as he’s only had a short amount of time to acclimate to what the coaching staff is going to ask him to do and get used to his teammates. He attempted two three-pointers and made one of them, grabbed two rebounds, dished two assists, and committed a foul that he regretted while he was in the air leaping towards the player he fouled. You could actually see Porter realize “crap, I fouled him” before the contact was made. Do not take anything important away from Porter’s availability here. There’s an active temporary injunction in his lawsuit against the NCAA for a fifth year of eligibility, so he was eligible for this game after not being eligible for the open scrimmage at the beginning of the month. This might be a game to game or week to week thing for a while.
- Ian Miletic did not check in until there was 2:19 left in the game. He had actually headed to the scorer’s table before that, but that’s where the under-4 timeout landed. I raised the issue of his lack of minutes on the trip to Canada in his Player Preview, and the fact of the matter is that MU was up 20 points or thereabouts for the final 10 minutes of the game. This is not an encouraging sign.
- Nash Walker traveled to Green Bay but sat out due to concussion protocols. The fact that he was in a loud basketball arena is a good sign for his level of concussion recovery, but this is one more thing layered on top of missing pretty much the entire offseason due to shoulder surgery. If he doesn’t get cleared for Sunday’s exhibition against Michigan State, my already not high level of expectations for him are going to dip even lower.
I know you guys didn’t get to see the game, so I can’t ask you what you thought about what you saw. So, we’ll flip it around: What questions do you have that I didn’t cover here already? Do you see something interesting in the box score that you want clarification on? Is there a player you’d like to know more about? Pipe up in the comments if you’ve got a question!
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