It’s rare that we see what amounts to a step backwards for a sophomore, but that certainly looks like what this season was.
With the 2024-25 season long since in the books, let’s take a few moments to look back at the performance of each member of YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles this year. While we’re at it, we’ll also take a look back at our player previews and see how our preseason prognostications stack up with how things actually played out. We’ll run through the roster in order of total minutes played going from lowest to highest, and today we’ll move along to a sophomore that didn’t quite make the jump that we were hoping to get from him this year……..
Tre Norman
Sophomore — #5 — Guard — 6’4” — 210 lbs. — Boston, Massachusetts
WHAT WE SAID:
Reasonable Expectations
We’re keeping this inside the bounds of “let’s not be crazy” here. We all think that Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell, and Chase Ross are going to start for Marquette, right? If that’s the case, those guys are going to play between 25 and 30 minutes a game…… and so anything Tre Norman does has to fit in around that. He can probably play with any two of them and could easily be part of a four-guard rotation and play some decent minutes as a result.
In fact, Marquette is going to have at least 30 minutes a game available. Quite honestly, the state of play here means that Norman needs to play some extended minutes just to fill time on the court. I don’t think that Damarius Owens and Zaide Lowery can take point guard minutes like Norman can, so there’s a need for him to play and contribute, at the very least until Sean Jones can find his way back to availability.
This might mean that Norman struggles to get past the 10 minute a game mark, by the way. It depends on exactly how much Shaka Smart wants Kam Jones to play the point guard role on the roster as opposed to his off/shooting guard role from last season. If Jones is capable of doing stuff like the 15 points and 11 assists we saw from him in the Open Scrimmage, then that’s probably going to mean that Marquette doesn’t need Norman to excel in that role.
All of that is to say that when the BartTorvik.com algorithm says that Norman’s projected to average 4.0 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in less than 15 minutes a night, maaaaaaybe take it seriously, and also wonder if it’s maybe overshooting things.
Why You Should Get Excited
Usually I try to attach some kind of “here’s a thing we saw for 40 seconds at least to make me wonder about the top end possibilities” situation to this section. I don’t have this for Norman, not really. All I have for that is that I got the sense he was hesitant for a lot of last season but when the confidence emerged, he was looking much better.
So stick with me on the Vibes Check here: If Shaka Smart imbues him with the confidence to play at his best AND the staff decides that MU needs more of a point guard on the floor than whatever combo guard play that Kam Jones gives them, then it is Tre Norman’s time to shine, baybay!
I would like this to happen. I don’t have evidence to back this up. I just think it would be neat and fun if Marquette was playing winning basketball while Tre Norman was emerging as a notable contributor. It’s fun to watch guys make jumps as a player, and it’s fun to watch it happening while good things are happening for the team.
Potential Pitfalls
But what if it doesn’t come together for Norman?
We can’t ignore the fact that he shot under 19% from three-point land last season. We can’t ignore the fact that he shot under 18% in 19 games of Big East play. Sure, maybe the problem is that he wasn’t getting consistent minutes and maybe just getting into a rhythm is important. If you’re going to play point guard or lead guard or just guard of any kind for Marquette, you have to be able to be an interesting three-point threat on this team. If that’s not coming together for Norman, then Marquette’s going to have to look in other directions for minutes. If that combines with Kam Jones throwing double-doubles around like candy, then that’s a real problem for Norman’s possibilities. If the backcourt rotation is better served by more of Zaide Lowery and Damarius Owens than Norman, that’s just how it has to go to win ballgames.
When we published the Tre Norman preview back in October, it was about two weeks after the Open Scrimmage when we saw Norman sitting out and receiving treatment for a shoulder injury suffered in practice when he ran into Stevie Mitchell. At the time, given that the start of the season was a month away from the scrimmage and another two weeks away from when the preview published, I just ignored the impact of the injury on Norman’s season.
Now, here in late April, we have to reassess whether or not that was right.
The fact of the matter is that Tre Norman played a combined 15 minutes against George Mason and Central Michigan after playing 16 minutes in Marquette’s 40 point opening night win against Stony Brook. Now, you could say “hey, those GMU and CMU games were closer than anyone really liked until the last few minutes,” and sure, that’s true. But that also means that if you’re saying “Tre Norman didn’t play because Marquette needed reliable minutes in closer contests,” then that’s a problem for Tre Norman’s entire season now, isn’t it?
He followed that up with 13 minutes in a very competitive game against Maryland…. and then combined for 13 minutes against Purdue and Georgia. Now I don’t know what to think, other than Norman was having some residual setbacks from that shoulder injury up through this point of the year.
I’m going game by game logging his minutes for another reason, too. We’re now up through the first six games of the season, and Tre Norman has yet to hit a three-pointer. In his defense, he was 0-for-3, but that means that he attempted just three triples in six games….. which is probably not great for an offense designed to get open threes for just about every single player on the court. If you are hanging a red blinking arrow on your head saying “not only am I not a threat to hit, I’m not even a threat to shoot,” it’s a real problem relative to how opponents are going to defend Marquette.
To that end: Norman shot 6-for-29 for the rest of the season while appearing in every game for the Golden Eagles. That is 20.7%. Mix those first three misses back in, and Norman shot 18.8% on the year, technically just barely worse than he was as a freshman…. and on fewer attempts, too. This, unfortunately, is probably a big reason why Tre Norman played single digit minutes in 13 of Marquette’s 22 (regular season and tournament) games against Big East opponents. It’s probably a big reason why he played single digit minutes in each of Marquette’s final six games of the season and 10 of the final 13, too. At a glance, that 20.5% turnover rate — way up from his freshman year number of 14.0% — seems like it was a big part, but that’s really more a by-product of how few minutes he was playing than anything else. That 13 game run of mostly single digit outings? Four turnovers. That’s not a lot….. but when you play three combined minutes against St. John’s and UConn and turn it over twice, that rate goes way up real quick.
So what we ended up with, even with point guard minutes available in the rotation, at the very least to change up the looks that Marquette was throwing at teams, Tre Norman wasn’t able to grab hold of a solid rotation spot and chip in. Whether that’s because that shoulder injury just lingered all year, or it’s because he just couldn’t hit the shots that benefit the entire team, or it’s because he couldn’t help but turn the ball over in what little playing time he was getting, or some combination, who knows. But in a year where Marquette needed bench guys to step up, especially guys who weren’t freshmen, the Golden Eagles didn’t get that step up from Tre Norman.
We can’t even point at his defense as a notable contribution that MU just couldn’t get on the floor enough because of his other issues. According to Hoop Explorer, Marquette was a little bit more than one point per 100 possessions better on defense against top 150 opponents with Norman on the floor. That’s good! Being better with the guy on the floor is good!
The problem is that the offense was more than seven points per 100 trips worse: 113.2 with him on the floor, 120.4 without him. If it was a notable gap on defense, you’ll find a way to live with “only” 113.2 points per 100 possessions, 1.13 per trip, with a guy. “A little more than one point” isn’t enough of a gap to say that Norman was truly making an impact, and if you’re looking at trying to maximize your advantages, playing Tre Norman wasn’t doing that for the Golden Eagles.
BEST GAME
In a season high 17 minutes against Seton Hall on February 18th, Tre Norman put in a season high nine points thanks to a 5-for-7 run at the free throw line. He also chipped in two rebounds, a block, and a steal. Marquette won this game by 24, tho. So, with that in mind, I want to give it to the road game against Xavier. Two points, three rebounds, and two assists in 13 minutes as Marquette edged out the Musketeers, 72-70. I think if we had gotten a lot more of that from Tre Norman this season, we’d all feel a lot better about how it all went for both him and for the team in general.
SEASON GRADE
In the preview, I wondered if 4.0 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in less than 15 minutes from the BartTorvik.com algorithm was either about right or overshooting things a little for what was reasonably expected from Tre Norman. I ended up being right on that overshooting what he ended up at: 1.9 points, 1.5 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 8.9 minutes per game. When I said “overshooting,” I was thinking more along the lines of “that’s a little high,” not “hey, how about half of that, maybe less?”
In fact, officially, Norman ended up averaging fewer minutes per game as a sophomore than he did as a freshman: 9.0 vs 8.9. Combine that motif with his shooting getting worse, ever so slightly, leading to Norman being even more reluctant to shoot it, plus the turnovers, and the lack of a consistent role….. ugh.
I hate doing this. It’s so rare that I have to do this, but it is what it is. He whiffed on the reasonable expectations and veered straight into the potential pitfalls. I have to give him a 3.
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