MILWAUKEE — Early in a day that ended with two hours of straight basketball bacchanal, Marquette’s men’s hoops staff had a meeting. They found their way to the subject of patience, and exactly how much of it they needed to give their current roster, which was happily bought in but also more inexperienced than most people realized. A Kobe Bryant mantra wound up in the mix, as often happens when Shaka Smart is part of any conversation.
Be patient … but impatient.
Don’t look for a time jump to what everyone wants it to look like, internally or externally, no matter how desperately they want it to look like that. But don’t settle for less than the next step, however large or small it is. “It’s understanding they’re not going to be all the way where you want them to go, all the time,” Smart said late Tuesday, gripping a telltale rolled-up box score in a Fiserv Forum hallway, “but we’ve gotta demand it.”
Only a few minutes earlier, of course, Smart left the scene of an asteroid impact, a night that was necessary for what he’s trying to build and also a pretty terrible argument for everyone to chill for a minute while it’s built. Marquette 96, No. 6 Baylor 70 was an actual thing that happened on a basketball court. Not something out of a hallucination. Not a chapter of Golden Eagles fan fic. By 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday, the building was up for grabs. Five minutes after that, the place was what lay beyond. A 17,000-seat sweat lodge. A portal to a metaverse. Dogs and cats living together. The elders will speak of it for generations.
For a good long while Tuesday, the idealized version of Shaka Smart’s Marquette came to life. Something the second-year coach surely sees in his wildest dreams. It had to happen, at some point. Even across the six wins over ranked teams a year ago, it wasn’t this. Instead, this happened on Nov. 29, 2022, all of 40 games into Smart’s time occupying an office at the Al McGuire Center. “We can play,” sophomore guard Kam Jones said. “We belong on the court with anybody.”
And here’s the part no one wants to hear but absolutely has to, the Category 5 wind that Smart knows he may lean into for the foreseeable future: It happened, but it has to happen again. Marquette demonstrated what it can be under its still semi-new head coach but has to show it can be its optimal self over and over and over. There have been plenty of days and nights over the past few years that felt like a revival and went nowhere, and if we’re being overly picky, this perfect version of Marquette existed for 20 minutes on Tuesday. That’s an amuse-bouche.
The @WBsilverlining highlights of tonight’s win over No. 6 Baylor. #MUBB | #WeAreMarquette pic.twitter.com/pdscqBhid0
— Marquette Basketball (@MarquetteMBB) November 30, 2022
A few months removed from a one-and-done NCAA Tournament appearance, proof of concept is still crucial for Smart and his staff, particularly after two near-misses against power conference teams this season. It’s not a promise.
Which is where the impatient patience comes in. Reaching a level where excellence is taken for granted may take time. And, well, best of luck selling that to the masses now. “You gotta win some of these games,” Smart said. “Our guys are very receptive. They try to do what we ask. We went down to Purdue, they followed the plan, they hung in there, they stayed with it, we didn’t finish the game. So you don’t have that win in your pocket. Players need proof that what you’re asking them to do works. So today was good for that. But obviously we got a long way to go in terms of continuing to build.”
It’s worth remembering that when Marquette hired Smart in the spring of 2021, it bound itself to some forbearance. The concept of the long game was embedded in the deal. Smart’s time at Texas in part convinced him that his methods and message are most effective over a three- or four-year span, and maybe not so much with come-and-go five-star dynamos. Marquette, correctly, saw that as institutional glove-in-hand. Didn’t guarantee it would work. But that’s how it would work if it did.
The 2022-23 version of the Golden Eagles fits the timeline. Let’s say 20 minutes per game over the course of a 30-game season — conservatively — represents a full, robust year of college basketball experience. That’s 600 minutes of floor time. Marquette started three juniors against Baylor … and two of them didn’t cross the 600-minute plateau until last season, the second of their college careers. The other nine players who logged meaningful minutes Tuesday are sophomores and freshmen.
From certain angles, this may seem like an old-ish team. It’s not. To wit: Marquette ranks 303rd in the nation in experience this season, per KenPom.com.
That’s how a five-point road loss to Purdue and a three-point neutral-floor loss to Mississippi State happen. No shame in either, given the apparent trajectory of both opponents. But inexperienced teams don’t always close. They take lumps. They adjust and apply. They learn.
The Baylor game was a referendum on Marquette’s capacity to do that, more than a statement or announcement of any kind. Despite ranking 41st nationally in 3-point attempt rate coming in (45.6 percent of all attempts from behind the arc), the Golden Eagles made only 31.8 percent of those shots, good for 229th nationally. That isn’t a way to live. Spreading the floor and attacking the lane and either finishing at the rim or spraying the ball to the perimeter for 3s — that is absolutely the way, given the shape of this Marquette roster. And that was Tuesday. Clinical, mostly. The Golden Eagles stuck to the game plan and pressured the softer spots in Baylor’s lineup off the bounce, with 22 of the first 34 points coming in the paint. No coincidence the lead had already swelled to 20 by that point.
And no coincidence that the best shooting night of the year from long range — 12 of 25 shooting from 3 — followed. When it didn’t settle for shots on possessions, Marquette’s inside-out game was poetic. A David Joplin skip pass to Tyler Kolek for a wide-open corner 3. A one-more pass to Olivier Maxence-Prosper, who drove off the great ball rotation for a dunk. A second-half sequence — albeit one that ended in a long 2 — in which two Golden Eagles pump-faked and drove and kicked before Joplin also pump-faked and drove and then pulled up for a jumper he cashed. It wasn’t a hot night. It was, as Scott Drew put it afterward, an “avalanche.”
“Normally,” the Baylor coach said, “that’s what we do to teams.”
Most repeatable, and most auspicious, was the Marquette defensive pressure that led to 16 induced turnovers in the first half alone. (Baylor’s previous season high: 15.) Marquette’s program goal for deflections is 32 per game. It totaled either 36 or 38 on Tuesday night, though Smart couldn’t recall exactly in his postgame debriefing. “More than 32,” he said. “That’s all I care about.” That looked a lot like optimal Shaka Smart basketball. It doesn’t happen if the players don’t want it to happen. If they don’t commit to it happening.
Shaka Smart is 25-15 at Marquette after a rout of No. 6 Baylor Tuesday. (Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via USA Today)
No one walked out of Fiserv Forum wondering if the players are listening, put it that way. “The best buy-in team I’ve ever coached was the year after the Final Four at VCU,” Smart said. “Weren’t the most talented team, but those guys really were just all-in. This team, in some ways, reminds me of that team. Not a lot of older guys. But guys that don’t feel like they have all the answers and are willing to try to do what the coaches ask.”
And yet … deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Mind your diaphragm, and all that.
Yes, the Golden Eagles charged into the locker room after the win, with some unidentifiable voice at the head of the line yelling “They said we wouldn’t get it done, bro!” before the doors closed and the out-of-sight celebration began. (Unclear who “they” was, other than maybe everyone.) Yes, they inspired some gallows humor in Drew, who walked down the ramp after his postgame remarks and apologized to everyone in the room for a boring second half. And yes, Smart said he was happy for everyone associated with the program, citing Baylor’s “championship pedigree” and calling it the best his Marquette teams have played relative to the opponent.
The head coach also stood in a hallway a few minutes later still pained by the late swoon and loss at Purdue, no matter how good it looks in retrospect. He recalled his team’s uneven performance against woeful Chicago State all of four days ago. He almost smiled when he said he would be very interested to see how this group processes this win before a rivalry showdown with Wisconsin on Saturday, a new and different test on every conceivable level.
On Tuesday, for a while, Marquette was exactly what Shaka Smart’s Marquette can be. It was rowdy. It was rapacious. It was something else. And it only truly means something when it’s not a surprise anymore.
(Top photo of Olivier Maxence-Prosper: Jeff Hanisch / USA Today)
