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I support Wojo and believe he has made a lot of strides as a head coach since his first year. Having said that, it is baffling to see a coach that was once prided in his defense being unable to coach and/or implement a strong defensive unit on any of his teams. You can only use players as an excuse for so long before all of your team is fully recruited by you. I thought there was no way we were going to be as bad defensively as last year's unit - I may have been wrong.

As an outsider, Marquette has not really seemed to get back on track since Buzz left. I liked the Wojo hire at the time but I'm not sure he's the answer...MU gets good recruits but I'm not seeing them get that much better in terms of development and such. I'd say he's an ok coach and below average developing players from my perception at least.

Jury is still out. The few things that would cause some concern:
1. Team makeup - when your two best players are both 5’10” I think it’s a problem. It’s one thing if Howard and Rowsey were lightening quick and could be disruptive on both ends of the floor. But their key skill is shooting. Its a nice trait but brings little balance to the team. And both need room to shoot over larger guards. Their size limits what they can do as a team on both sides of the floor.
2. Player development - Did Cheatham get any better after 2.5 yrs in the program? Has Howard taken a big step forward? Heldt? All seem to be the same player year after year.
3. Defense - If you’re not going to guard then you need to sit. Half the game is defense. But MU seems to mail it in on D. For a guy like Wojo who was all heart and effort, that surprises me more than anything.

I think you give Wojo this year and next. If MU is not a top 5 team in the league these next two years, you start thinking about alternatives IMO. It’s too good of a program to be this underwhelming.

GumbyDamnit! wrote:Jury is still out. The few things that would cause some concern:
1. Team makeup - when your two best players are both 5’10” I think it’s a problem. It’s one thing if Howard and Rowsey were lightening quick and could be disruptive on both ends of the floor. But their key skill is shooting. Its a nice trait but brings little balance to the team. And both need room to shoot over larger guards. Their size limits what they can do as a team on both sides of the floor.
2. Player development - Did Cheatham get any better after 2.5 yrs in the program? Has Howard taken a big step forward? Heldt? All seem to be the same player year after year.
3. Defense - If you’re not going to guard then you need to sit. Half the game is defense. But MU seems to mail it in on D. For a guy like Wojo who was all heart and effort, that surprises me more than anything.

I think you give Wojo this year and next. If MU is not a top 5 team in the league these next two years, you start thinking about alternatives IMO. It’s too good of a program to be this underwhelming.

If we aren’t top 2 next year people will call for his head.

Howard has developed a very reliable floater that has worked very well this year as opposed to getting stuffed at the rim each game and Hauser has developed more interior game this year as well. Beyond those two the players have not developed much.

I think they're way too dependent on the 3 pointer...

4 tough teams so far- 2 wins 2 losses(Purdue, VCU, Wichita, LSU)
109 2's shot
120 3's shot
meanwhile their opponents-
158 2's shot
79 3's shot

I just don't think that's a recipe for long term success. You say what about Creighton a few years ago. I looked, and they took 44.6% of their field goal attempts as 3's. Marquette is at 48.8% so far this season. Think about it- they take almost 10% more 3's than Creighton did in 2014. And it's 1 thing to do it when you're shooting 41.4% from 3 like Creighton did a few years ago. It's another thing when you're only shooting 36.3%.

Sorry to reply again, but the more I think about it Marquette reminds me a lot of SJ. One of our major issues the past 7 years or so has been the lack of player development. It starts with solid recruiting, we get hopeful, we don't play well but we attribute it to them being young, and then expect significant progress year after year but it doesn't always happen. As a team we have certainly made incremental progress but guys like Yakwe, Amar, and Ahmed really don't appear to have progressed at all and even regressed in the case of Yakwe. You look at a team like Nova and no matter who they have, you know they will be studs by their senior years. That's one sign of a good coach...develop your talent. Nova could get the #180 recruit nationally and I'd have faith Wright would turn him into a stud by his senior year. I don't see that with us so much and the same can be said about Marquette. I feel like another similarity is a lack of bangers down low. The few big men we have are stringbeans or undersized in height. Marquette is a skinny team as well. You need to balance good guards with a few big meaty bodies down low if you want to make a real run come tourney time. I've come to realize it's not so much about athleticism when looking for big men, but rather skill. Can't tell you how many times big dorky guys dominate down low even if they have a 2" vertical. If I had to bet, I'd bet Wojo is not the answer but he still has time. As someone else said, if Marquette is not top 5 either of the next 2 years, you may be better off looking elsewhere.

This is Wojo's 4th year and he has 1 NCAA tournament appearance and 0 wins. By comparison, Mack had 3 appearances with 2 Sweet 16's. Mack was in the A-10 and likely getting paid a sliver of what Wojo is making.

DudeAnon wrote:This is Wojo's 4th year and he has 1 NCAA tournament appearance and 0 wins. By comparison, Mack had 3 appearances with 2 Sweet 16's. Mack was in the A-10 and likely getting paid a sliver of what Wojo is making.

sometimes early success can be predicated on what you have when you get there. I mean when Mack got there the 4 years before- X had 4 appearances with 2 sweet 16's. Mack took over a team with back to back sweet 16's. Wojo took over a team that was 17-15 the year before he got there. Wojo took over close to a dumpster fire quite frankly.

DudeAnon wrote:This is Wojo's 4th year and he has 1 NCAA tournament appearance and 0 wins. By comparison, Mack had 3 appearances with 2 Sweet 16's. Mack was in the A-10 and likely getting paid a sliver of what Wojo is making.

MU won 20 games the year before that NCAA appearance, our AD being terrible at scheduling shouldn’t be on Wojo.

As far as what Mack did I’m going to say I’ll take the players that we have over the what was the quote? “We a bunch of gangsters” that Mack took. It’s almost like it’s easier to build a program with Sean Millers left overs of a 27-6 season in an easier conference than it is to build one in a top two conference after a 17 win season that saw half the team leave.

Buzz left us after two girls were gang raped, players got into bar fights under age, were constantly suspended, assaulted a person at a Qdoba and had two, albeit minor, recruiting violations plus pulling strings to get someone in that had no business being at MU. so Wojo is here to clean up the program and build from scratch not take a bunch of people without a care what they do off the court like Mack did.

I’m not saying wojo is a great coach, but he’s building from the ground up with guys who respect the name on the jersey