In the last four offseasons, Marquette was the only high-major program in men’s college basketball not to take one Division I transfer. Shaka Smart made a decision to bet on the development of his own players in the spring of 2022 instead of chasing a quick fix or reinforcements out of the transfer portal, and it kind of … stuck.
It almost became a badge of honor. A way to win that separated Marquette from everyone else.
Then Marquette went 12-20 last season.
This spring, Smart pivoted and signed two players out of the transfer portal — Louisville center Sananda Fru and St. Thomas guard Nolan Minessale. To the outside, the moves signaled a possible change in approach: After missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in five seasons at Marquette, was this an admission a big-time program can’t win without the transfer portal?
How Smart landed at that decision is not as cut and dry as it may seem. He says it wasn’t just about the results.
Smart is a big fan of former professional gambler Annie Duke, whose 2018 book “Thinking in Bets,” has helped shape how he sees program building. Duke writes about resulting, which is the process of determining whether a process is right or wrong based on the end result. One example she uses is the 2015 Super Bowl when the Seahawks had the ball, trailing 28-24, at the 1-yard line on second down with a minute left in the fourth quarter. Seattle had one timeout remaining and snapped the ball with 26 seconds left. Quarterback Russell Wilson ended up throwing an interception on that play, which immediately was perceived as one of the worst play calls of all time. Why not just run the ball with Marshawn Lynch?
Duke lays out the odds. Lynch scores from 1 yard out half the time. With one timeout, the Seahawks would have had time for two running plays. Had they run the ball twice, they lose in that scenario 25 percent of the time. Duke poses the question: Would you prefer two tries or three against a great defense? Most would say three. So what’s the cost of running a passing play? An interception, obviously. But the odds of an interception in that scenario were 1 percent.
The lesson: Seattle’s process was not bad unless you’re only basing it on the result.
“Obviously we’ve evolved some, but let’s just say our process was we are going to only take high school players and we’re going to do that for a hundred years,” Smart said. What happens over the span of a hundred years is certainly a lot more significant to provide analysis or feedback on the process than what happens over one year.”
Smart is told the beginning of the transfer portal era, when name, image and likeness was introduced and transfers no longer had to sit out one season, sure feels like a hundred years ago.
“That’s part of the reason that we’ve evolved,” he said. “Things are much, much different. When we made the decision in 2022 to not take transfers, that was based on where things were then.”
Let’s go back to that time to understand Smart’s perspective.
Marquette’s 2022-23 season was transformational. The Golden Eagles had been picked ninth in the Big East heading into Smart’s second season. They lost three starters the previous year and rather than try to replace them with older players in the transfer portal, Smart bet on the young guys in his program and ended up winning the Big East.That spring Smart had four starters returning and lost Olivier-Maxence Prosper, who left early for the NBA. Smart had to make a decision. Was he going to bet on what he had to replace Prosper, or grab a player in the transfer portal? His players, led by Oso Ighodaro, who had been one of those players Smart had bet on and who turned into a breakout star, gave him the answer.
“Oso was very adamant we don’t need anyone else,” Smart said. “We have what we need.”
Shaka Smart guided Marquette to a Big East title in his second season in 2023. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
That one decision guided the next few years. Marquette was a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year in 2024 and made the Sweet 16. That team, it’s important to note, was not only high school recruits. When Smart first got the job in 2021, he brought in four transfers — Tyler Kolek, Darryl Morsell, Kur Kuath and Prosper — and all four succeeded. Kolek, in particular, was the heart and soul of the group. The other part of that core was two high school classes that included Kam Jones, Ighodaro, Stevie Mitchell and David Joplin.
The result made the process look brilliant.
“This past year was our first season without either one of those classes, and I could feel it when those guys were older that man, as much as it’s gonna hurt to lose these guys as players — Tyler and Oso in pick and roll and what Stevie Mitchell did on defense and Kam Jones scoring ability — as much as that’s going to hurt, actually, what’s going to be tougher is replacing these guys culturally in terms of setting a tone for who we are,” Smart said. “The classes that followed those guys, although they had some good players, they weren’t quite on the same level of the things we’re talking about.”
This past season, Smart admits, he overestimated what he thought certain players would be able to do in the roles they were given, both on the court and culturally.Marquette also had some injuries to veterans — Sean Jones and Zaide Lowery missed a combined 45 games — and that forced younger players into bigger roles. By early December, Smart was starting freshmen guards Nigel James and Adrien Stevens.
“Which is never the greatest idea in the Big East,” Smart said, “although those guys really got better and grew and improved, and I think it’ll pay dividends for us in the future.”
Smart didn’t want to overreact to the results, but a good process is to continuously evaluate your process.
“The biggest area where I’ve kind of evolved and what I’ve learned after going through that period is it really is more of a year-to-year decision than just this long-term overarching philosophy,” Smart said. “The master of the obvious statement is the success of your high school recruiting and retention and previous years’ transfer recruiting and retention, that determines how much you’re gonna need to do the current year’s portal recruiting.”
Smart retained nine players from last season, but he determined this group needed help. So it was time to hit the portal.
There was just one issue: Smart was a newbie.
Not recruiting transfers for four years meant that Smart did not have to deal with navigating the portal for four years. (Maybe that’s why the 49-year-old still looks so young.) Marquette had aced transfer recruiting in 2021, but a lot had changed since then. So Smart studied which transfers had succeeded in the Big East and also went seeking advice.
One phrase that kept coming up was “you can get lost in the portal.” Not long into the process, he understood what that meant.
“You can be working on one guy and then all of a sudden two or three other guys come up and that can take your attention, but it’s not like that one guy went away,” Smart said.
Smart knew he needed an experienced playmaker on the perimeter and a center who could rebound and finish around the basket.
One other sliver of advice that proved helpful was, when possible, recruit players you have a level of familiarity with. Marquette was fortunate that Minessale, from the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, grew up a Marquette fan and his parents attended the school. Smart and his staff had also watched him play in high school.
“We weren’t starting from square one,” Smart said. “We were very familiar with him.”
When recruiting high school players, coaches often get to know guys fairly well because the relationship is formed over multiple years. But Smart was reminded that sometimes you know right away if the guy is right when he thought back to Kolek, who transferred to Marquette after one season at George Mason.
“The first time I talked to Tyler Kolek was the last time I ever wondered if Tyler Kolek would be good here,” Smart said. “It was so obvious in having one conversation with him.”
Minessale is more stoic, but Smart could tell once they started talking about basketball that he had a mind and a passion for the game.
“Then the moment with him was in talking to other coaches about him,” Smart said. “You talk to people that know much more than you do about someone, and then they keep saying the same thing, both about who they are as a person, but then also about the basketball side. It’s a powerful indicator.”
The Marquette coaches had no prior relationship with Fru, but their needs and Fru’s needs aligned. Fru wanted to play with a point guard who he could thrive with in two-man games. Marquette wanted a big man who could pair well with James, who had a 37.3 percent assist rate as a freshman.
Sananda Fru was the No. 39 player in The Athletic’s transfer portal rankings. (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
The pairing makes a lot of sense; Fru thrives finishing around the basket, and Marquette is really good at generating those shots.
Smart also likes how Minessale and Fru fit in with the players he already has. That “getting lost in the portal” message, he said, also related to making sure he was still working on the development of his current players.
One luxury of the portal, which he hadn’t thought a lot about until this spring, was the difference when evaluating a player with college experience compared to someone without. That makes it easier to get it right.
But Smart also knows the best programs emphasize development, taking the players they have and helping them grow as people and players.
“The best programs still do that really, really well,” Smart said. “It’s less cut and dry that a guy’s gonna get X percentage better each year than maybe it once was. Now that doesn’t mean it’s any less important. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it. That doesn’t mean guys can’t improve, but I think the equations changed a little bit because of transfers and because of other factors — money — but it doesn’t mean you try any less hard.”
Smart gives the example of Michael Phillips II, who reclassified from the 2026 class to 2025 and averaged 2.1 points in 8 minutes per game for Marquette as a freshman. Phillips had his best game of the season in Marquette’s final game, scoring 10 points and making two 3s at Madison Square Garden in the Big East tournament.
“He’s a guy that 15 years ago, before there were a ton of transfers, that’s the type of guy that everyone’s like, yes, this guy’s the future of our program,” Smart said. “His development is as important as anything that can be going on in this program. And everyone feels that way — the coaches, the fans, the administrators.
“And so I can’t really speak for anyone else, but like that’s still the case for me and for us. … It’s easy to get your mind pulled in different directions or people are saying there’s other things that matter more. I still believe a huge key for us to be successful at Marquette is helping Michael Phillips make explosive jumps in between the seasons he’s here.”
That’s the process that Smart has won with before. One bad season isn’t changing his process.
Smart has adapted slightly, but he still wants to give players like Phillips the runway to succeed.
“Basketball’s changed and maybe that’s not realistic anymore and maybe every team needs to get as old as it possibly can get, as good as it possibly can get every year, and then reset,” Smart said. “But man, those guys really rewarded us when we gave them that runway. Can Michael Phillips do that for us? Can Royce Parham do that for us? Well, they better. Otherwise, we won’t be as good. But that’s what we’re working at.
“It’s a race against time to see how quickly guys can get good.”
