Marquette’s loss gives way to reflection and a productive offseason for Shaka, Golden Eagles

Shaka Smart now shifts to offseason after Marquette was eliminated from Big East tournament by Xavier, ending Golden Eagles’ season at 12-20. (Photo by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

NEW YORK — Shaka Smart has only experienced two losing seasons in his career, the second of which being the 12-20 mark he and his Marquette team enter the record books with after Wednesday’s Big East tournament loss to Xavier.

Smart’s time-tested method of player development came under fire this year more than any other season, largely because of the ubiquity of the transfer portal and his steadfast commitment to the culture of his program. The coach relented during the season and admitted he and his staff would ultimately re-enter the portal this coming offseason after it yielded several payoffs in the early years of his tenure, but also recommitted to his holistic method of improving the incumbent talent already in the program.

“I thought more about roster construction this season during the season than I ever have before, obviously because of the changing landscape of everything,” Smart conceded. “You don’t want to necessarily determine your rotation for next year, but over the next couple months, we do have to determine our roster. I do think we have some young players — Michael Phillips showed it tonight — that can emerge and develop, and be part of a rotation playing heavy minutes. I think Damarius Owens has had games where he’s been really, really good. But at the same time, we’ll still have a lot of young guys next year, and that’s why the number one thing over the next several months is growth.”

“There’s a lot of things that go into that. (We’re) really following the formula that Oso Ighodaro, Tyler Kolek, Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell, those guys laid out as young players when they went from freshmen to sophomores and sophomores to juniors. Exactly what they did is what these guys need to do.” 

Even in the face of the anomaly of a record, there were still moments where Marquette showed flashes of a group that had the pieces and potential to remain where it normally is. The Golden Eagles’ freshman duo of Nigel James, Jr. and Adrien Stevens, the former recognized as the Big East’s Freshman of the Year, offer strong building blocks for Smart, as does burgeoning big man Royce Parham. That is only the start of the process, and Marquette’s coach is cognizant of that.

“From New Year’s on, we were not in a good spot,” Smart acknowledged. “Sometimes that was reflected on the floor, sometimes we looked like a really young team that needed to gain toughness and needed to gain a defensive identity.”

“What goes into winning doesn’t change, so what I know to do is roll up my sleeves and once we get back together, as it relates to our team and growing, there’s a lot of basketball areas — and even cultural areas — where, in a game like tonight, we can be better. What will help with that is these guys’ continuing maturation, and more importantly, their connection with each other, and then I’ve gotta really help them understand all the little things that we have to own and do better to win close games.”

If anyone can readjust a ship that veered off course, Smart is one of the safer bets to do so. His passion for building relationships and connectivity is such that he was already looking forward to shaping his next outfit minutes before his current season culminated. But in the wake of the final disappointment of an arduous year, he was realistic in saying even he needed a step back to truly reassess his situation and encompass everything.

“My first thought when the game ended was, ‘I wanted to coach these guys another day,’ he said. “I wanted to get a chance to play again tomorrow. It wasn’t in the cards.”

“It sucks. There’s a lot of takeaways. When the season gets done, there’s always this time where you want to evaluate everything and you want to figure everything out the next day, but you need a little bit of separation from it to really have clarity. I think there’s a lot of basketball things where guys got better, but there’s a lot of areas where we just weren’t consistent enough this season.”