By SEAN BRENNAN
Special to
BIGEAST.com
It was just a couple of weeks ago when Marquette was sitting in the BIG EAST basement. Winless after three conference games and with a new head coach in Shaka Smart guiding a team with just two key holdovers from last season and eight new faces dotting his roster, well, that ninth-place pick in the BIG EAST Preseason Coaches’ Poll seemed about right.
But this was not what Darryl Morsell signed up for when he became one of Smart’s eight new faces. After a storied career at Maryland, where he became one of only 16 players in Terrapin history to score 1,000 points and grab 500 rebounds while making 100 starts, Morsell was looking to go out with a bang in his final season and he wasn’t about to let the season get away from the Golden Eagles.
So why did he choose Marquette to close out his stellar college career?
“I just wanted something different in my last year,” Morsell said. “Being from Baltimore and going to the University of Maryland, everything that I ever knew was in about a 30-to-45 minute radius. So, I thought coming out here would broaden my horizons with coach Smart. And I think it was a good decision.”
Yes, it was. So far this season Morsell is sitting in the top 15 in the BIG EAST in both scoring (15th at 13.1 ppg.) and free throw percentage (10th at 78.9%). But as much as his offensive numbers are helping the Golden Eagles, Morsell, the 2020-21 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, has also been a sensation on that end of the floor and supplying terrific leadership for a very young Marquette team.
So was the youthful roster a concern when he came aboard at Marquette?
“I didn’t have any real expectations. I knew it was going to be different for everybody with a lot of freshmen coming in and a different staff,” Morsell said. “But I was talking to coach Smart during the recruiting process and he was big on relationships. So even though everybody was new, he would find time to help us become close as players and have a great relationship with the coaching staff. So I wasn’t really worried about that.”
Though the non-conference portion of the Golden Eagles’ season started solidly with an 8-3 record, which included a victory over then-No. 10 Illinois, it was the start to the BIG EAST conference season that quickly became a cause of concern for Marquette. There were back-to-back losses to Xavier and UConn within a four-day span just before Christmas and after their Dec. 29 date with St. John’s was postponed, the Golden Eagles dropped to 0-3 after a 75-69 double overtime home loss to Creighton on New Year’s Day.
Not the way you wanted to begin 2022, especially with a 13-1 Providence team looming as your next opponent.
“I just knew we had to get one (victory) and our theme for that next game (vs. Providence) was ‘Go 1-0.’” Morsell said. “We just focused as a team on taking it one game at a time and trying to build from there. We know the season is so long, so as long as you can go 1-0 every game you can put yourself in a position to have success.”
That theme seems to be working wonders for Marquette now. After rolling over Providence with a convincing 88-56 win, the Golden Eagles followed it up with another lopsided win at Georgetown (92-64) before toppling DePaul, 87-76, their last time out. Suddenly that 0-3 start and last place seem like a long time ago.
“We knew what we were capable of, but it was a good feeling (defeating then-No. 16 Providence),” Morsell said. “We put a lot of work into the preparation of trying to get a win in the BIG EAST. And having it happen on our home court in front of our fans against a highly-ranked team was a great feeling.”
The thing about Marquette so far this season is that it seems there is a different “star” every night. One night it’s Justin Lewis, another Baltimore native, dropping 23 points on Providence. Another night you’ll see Olivier-Maxence Prosper pouring in 22 points in a win over Georgetown. How about Greg Elliott lighting up DePaul for a career-high 25 points in Marquette’s latest win? And let’s not forget superb point guard Tyler Kolek, the BIG EAST’s assists leader, dishing out 26 assists in the Golden Eagles’ current three-game winning streak. And of course, there’s always Morsell, who had a team-high 21 points in the win over Illinois, locking things down on the defensive end night in and night out.
It just seems like this gaggle of new Marquette faces is beginning to jell into a program that could make its share of noise in the BIG EAST this season.
“Throughout the year people start to become familiar with the consistency of practices and roles are getting more clear for the younger guys,” Morsell said. “So, time has allowed us to become familiar with each other and be more comfortable with what the team needs.”
It’s all about to get very interesting for Marquette in the next two and a half weeks as it begins a stretch of six straight games against ranked conference opponents, beginning with a home game against No. 20 Seton Hall on Saturday afternoon (FS1, noon ET).
And how do the Golden Eagles feel about the upcoming battle royales?
“This is what we all signed up for. We embrace it,” Morsell said. “We know we want to be a team playing in March in the tournament, so you’ve got to beat those types of teams in order to do that. It will definitely tell us a lot about ourselves as a team.”
NCAA Tournament prognosticators at both FOX and ESPN currently have seven of the 11 BIG EAST teams slated for dancing dates in March, Marquette included. How times have changed in a hurry for the Golden Eagles. It wasn’t all that long ago when they were winless and mired in the BIG EAST basement. Now the words “Marquette” and “NCAA Tournament” are beginning to appear in the same sentence.
And yes, this is exactly what Morsell signed up for with Marquette.
“We didn’t pay much attention to that preseason stuff and we kind of embraced that nobody believed in us,” Morsell said. “We knew what we were capable of. But the season is long so we’re not looking at projected rankings for the tournament and all that kind of stuff. We’re just more focused on winning right now and taking it one game at a time. And if we come prepared and do what we’ve got to do, that type of stuff will handle itself.”