Shaka Smart has never coached a season like 2025–26, and everyone in Milwaukee knows it — including him. The Marquette Golden Eagles finished 12–20, 7–13 in the Big East, tied for seventh, bounced by Xavier in the first round of the conference tournament and home for every postseason. It was the program’s worst record since the 10–18 nightmare of 1987–88, a .375 winning percentage that stands as one of the ugliest in school history. The offense was a struggle bus at best, the defense regressed starkly from the Smart norm, and the team lost twice to DePaul — the kind of indignity that doesn’t wash off with one good week. Smart, famously stoic, didn’t hide from any of it. Now comes the response, and it might be the most important season of his coaching life.
The 2026–27 Golden Eagles are built on a bet: that last year was the aberration, not the new reality, and that the coach who developed Tyler Kolek, Olivier-Maxence Prosper, Oso Ighodaro, Stevie Mitchell, Kam Jones and David Joplin into Big East starters — and turned Kolek into arguably the best point guard in program history and Jones into its second-leading scorer ever — still knows how to grow players. The roster math backs the optimism. Marquette returns 60.3 percent of its minutes, the highest mark in the Big East, and the preseason projections have the Golden Eagles third in the league and every bit an NCAA Tournament team. The core that lived through the fiasco is back to avenge it.
Everything starts with Nigel James Jr., and that is not hyperbole. The former top-90 recruit was a revelation as a freshman, averaging 19.3 points, 4.0 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 2.1 steals in conference play while shooting 49.3 percent from the field and 38.6 percent from three — Big East Freshman of the Year and an All-Big East Third Team pick. James is the kind of guard who bends entire defenses, and in year two, with the keys fully his, he has legitimate All-America upside. Beside him, fellow sophomore Adrien Stevens returns as the team’s best shooter (37.5 percent on 4.5 three-point attempts a game), and Damarius Owens and Michael Phillips II give the perimeter real depth.
The reinforcements are targeted, not splashy — very Smart. Nolan Minessale arrives from St. Thomas as a do-everything guard with All-Summit League First Team and All-Defensive Team honors, exactly the kind of winning player Marquette’s system is built for. Colin Porter, the sharpshooting point guard from Liberty (11.1 points, 3.4 assists), is the fascinating case: part of a group of athletes suing the NCAA in North Carolina court for a fifth year of eligibility, and a potential difference-maker if he’s cleared. Four-star freshman Ethan Johnston and Colton Crowdis add youth. Gone are seniors Chase Ross and Ben Gold, plus transfers Sean Jones (Toledo), Zaide Lowery (Dayton), Tre Norman (Milwaukee) and Sheek Pearson (Saint Louis). The message of the offseason was retention over overhaul — Smart banking on internal development to fix what broke.
What broke, specifically: the shooting (under 32 percent from three as a team), the health (Sean Jones’ season never got right), and the rotation churn (Lowery quit the team mid-year; Caedin Hamilton started 17 games out of necessity). This was not a “missed it by one win” season — Marquette was effectively eliminated from at-large contention by New Year’s Day and played the last two months knowing March was out of reach. The 7–13 league record actually flattered a team that started 0–4 in conference. Nobody around the program is pretending otherwise, which is why the bounce-back has to be real and not cosmetic.
The history hanging over Fiserv Forum this season makes the stakes feel even larger. The 2026–27 campaign marks the 50th anniversary of the 1977 national championship — Al McGuire’s last game, the coronation, the program’s soul — and Marquette is celebrating it in style all year. That team’s shadow is long: McGuire’s 1964–77 run also produced the 1974 national final and the 1970 NIT title back when the NIT mattered, and the program’s place in the sport’s lore was sealed for good in 2003, when Dwyane Wade’s 30-point triple-double against Kentucky in the regional final carried the Golden Eagles to the Final Four and announced a future NBA legend to America. The building will be full of ’77 all season. The current team’s job is to make sure the anniversary year isn’t just a museum exhibit.
Smart’s first four Marquette teams set a standard that makes last year look even more jarring: four straight NCAA Tournaments, seeds of 9, 2, 2 and 7 — the two No. 2 seeds the best in program history — plus a Big East regular-season and tournament championship. He took over a roster nobody thought much of and turned three inherited players into cornerstones. That track record is why the administration’s faith hasn’t wavered publicly, and why the fan base — restless, vocal, spoiled by the Kolek years — is watching this season as a referendum. Another March without a bid, and the conversation around Smart gets very uncomfortable. A return to the tournament with James as a star, and 2025–26 becomes the valley between peaks.
Home is Fiserv Forum, the downtown Milwaukee palace where 17,500 fans turn big nights into something legitimately intimidating. When Marquette is rolling, it’s one of the great home courts in the Big East — and the Big East wars define everything: UConn, Villanova, Creighton, the annual bloodletting. The Wisconsin rivalry remains the season’s emotional peak, the state’s civil war, and the non-conference slate always carries weight for a program that measures itself nationally.
What defines Marquette in 2026–27 is the tension between the anniversary and the urgency. Fifty years since McGuire cut down the nets, the program is simultaneously honoring its greatest team and demanding its current one prove last year was a fluke. Nigel James Jr. looks like a star. The minutes are back. The defense, Smart’s calling card, has nowhere to go but up. In Milwaukee, the expectation isn’t complicated: the Golden Eagles belong in March, and this is the year they get back there.
