INDIANAPOLIS — Behold today’s college basketball: Revolving-door rosters, tidal waves of transfers and lineups that have the changing faces of an airport terminal.
But then there’s Marquette.
The Golden Eagles are 18-3, tied for the lead in the Big East, ranked No. 9 this week in the Associated Press poll, and when it comes to the makeup of their team, are so . . . last decade. They sent out a lineup of Kam Jones, Chase Ross, Stevie Mitchell, Ben Gold and David Joplin on Tuesday night at Butler. Those are the same five guys who started the first 20 Marquette games. But there’s more.
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The five have now played in a combined 555 college basketball games. All 555 in Marquette uniforms. No transfers here. No sudden appearance of players from distant area codes. No here today and gone tomorrow. Just continuity and success.
The Golden Eagles have not dipped into the Division I transfer portal since the start of the 2022-23 season, while all around them, it’s a gusher. They are the only power league program that can say that. As of last weekend, they were one of nine teams in Division I that had used the same starting lineup every game. Two years ago, they were one of only two. Also, since the opening of the 22-23 season, a span covering parts of four calendar years and 94 games, Marquette has started only eight players. Kansas has already started nine in its first 19 games this season.
How is this swim-against-the-tide happening? And why? This is where coach Shaka Smart comes in. You remember him. He was at Texas, and before that, coached VCU to the Final Four in 2011. And before that, he was a magna cum laude graduate in history from Kenyon College. Shaka Smart, all right. Anyway, this is his fourth season with Marquette, and there he was in the hallway of Hinkle Fieldhouse Tuesday night, his team having just spotted Butler a 10-point lead and then blowing past the Bulldogs 78-69 to stay atop the Big East with a 9-1 conference record.
“We try to recruit guys from families, not just the players but the parent, who really value relationships. And then we really work at relationships very hard. I mean, it’s the number one thing we work on,” Coach Smart began. “Most importantly, that’s player-to-player relationships because if you and I are teammates and we love each other, if you’re staying, then I’m more likely to stay. Probably the opposite is true, too.”
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It is an unusual path to follow in 2025. Auburn is No. 1 with 10 transfers on the roster. St. John’s is tied with Marquette for the Big East lead, and five of the top six scorers began their careers elsewhere. The road to the Final Four has countless entrance and exit ramps. It’s everywhere. Well, almost.
“It doesn’t feel unusual because it’s kind of the old school before all this stuff, but certainly it’s intentional,” Smart said. “When this immediate eligibility transfer thing came in when I first got to Marquette, there were only three players that stayed, so we had to take some transfers to build a roster. We weren’t going to have 10 high school guys. But really, from there, we felt like we wanted to double down on the growth of our young players, and if we bring in some guy from Idaho State who averaged 17 points a game, what would it say to our returning players? Now, what that does is it puts a real onus on our development. We’ve got to get that guy who averaged two points a game as a freshman good enough to compete with that transfer from somewhere else.”
How’s that working out? Marquette has been 40-10 in the Big East for the past three seasons. Nobody has done better. Not even national championship trophy-hog Connecticut. The Golden Eagles were in the Sweet 16 last March. The current bunch of old friends is No. 15 in the latest NET ratings, the only Big East team in the top 22, and carries numbers that suggest soundness. Second in the nation in turnover margin and turnovers per game, fifth in steals.
“There’s 50 transfers in our league. That’s an average of five a team.” Smart said. “It’s not that transfers don’t mean anything to us, we just don’t take them but we have to play against them. It’s just the way we choose to do it. Is it perfect? No. Do we get our ass kicked by guys who transferred? Sometimes, yes. But we believe with what we value — relationships, growth and victory — this is the best way to do it.”
Such perspective has helped keep his roster together while the portal swirls around him with its quickie relationships and one-year stands.
“It wouldn’t be like this if he wasn’t the man he was,” said Kam Jones, a fourth-year Marquetter almost certainly headed for every All-American team.
This sense of shared mission can show at critical times on the court. “In a lot of ways that’s our biggest advantage over other teams. It’s not common,” Jones said. “When times get hard it’s important that we show that. All we want to do is win. In places where it’s not really like that, a lot of stuff other than winning can be on your mind. We really don’t have too much of that here.”
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“We tell each other the truth without hurting each other’s feelings. That’s really important to be able to hold each other accountable.”
Which they did after a shaky first half Tuesday at Butler. That’s when the gift of roster stability clicked in.
“A night like tonight, we’re down 10 late in the first half, these guys don’t break because they’ve been through it together,” Smart said. “It’s not five strangers out there looking at each other like, how are you going to be in this moment? They know.”
A key, he added, is how the older players pass that along to the young recruits, teaching them, in Smart’s words, how to be.
“Before you even talk about how to play, you’ve got to know how to be,” he said. “That’s what those guys have specialized in, is being Marquette guys. So that’s a foundation for us to go create success.”
Marquette could even be called a message: Yes, it is still possible to thrive with the same faces year after year.
“Obviously it’s all situational to the program, to the coach,” Smart said. “I can’t tell you how many coaches have said to me, `I’d love to do it that way, but I can’t.’ And so I get it. My first year at Marquette we took four transfers. We have just been fortunate to have a great group of young guys each year that value the experience of Marquette, appreciate winning, and then, most importantly, love the relationships they have with each other, so they don’t want to leave.”
How quaint.
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