What can we expect from the highest touted high school prospect of the Shaka Smart era so far?
The 2024-25 college basketball season is right around the corner, so let’s dive into the Marquette men’s basketball roster and take a look at what to expect from each player this season. Going forward in these Player Previews, we’ll be going in this order: The two true freshmen in alphabetical order by last name — skipping past Josh Clark who is not expected to play this season — then the redshirt freshman, then the returning players in ascending order of average minutes played last season.
We’re going to organize our thoughts about the upcoming season as it relates to each player into categories, as we always do:
- Reasonable Expectations
- Why You Should Get Excited
- Potential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we get started with our official Player Previews with the more nationally acclaimed of the two freshmen…….
Damarius Owens
Freshman — #10 — Forward — 6’7” — 190 lbs. — Rochester, New York
No matter how you slice it, Damarius Owens is the more obviously notable freshman between the pair that we expect to see earn minutes from Shaka Smart and the Golden Eagles’ staff this season. We’re just talking about recruiting services acclaim here. 247 Sports has him at #75 in the Class of 2024 in their internal rankings, and #63 in their Composite. On3 has him at #85 internally and #66 in their Industry Ranking, which is their version of a composite ranking. ESPN slots him in at #83, and Rivals is the one that’s helping pull Owens’ compilation numbers up, as they ranked him at #56 in the country…… and that’s down from #39 during last fall’s signing period.
To put it another way, Owens is the best high school prospect that Shaka Smart has signed during his still new-ish time as Marquette head coach. In fact, 247 Sports says that Owens is the sixth best prospect signed by Marquette since the turn of the century. Henry Ellenson, Dawson Garcia, Jajuan Johnson, Vander Blue, Joey Hauser…. and Owens. As you can see, there’s no guarantee of future status as a MU legend attached to being on this list, but there’s not any outright disappointments there, either.
Owens hails from Rochester, New York, but he spent the last two years of high school at Western Reserve Academy in eastern Ohio. As a basketball player, he was remarkably consistent in his last two seasons there. He averaged 14.2 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 2.3 assists as a junior, and followed that up with 14.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.9 assists as a senior. That senior year was capped off with a National Prep Championship, which is a heck of a way to go out. Here’s what 247 Sports wrote about Owens during that four-games-in-three-days stretch that earned them that Prep Championship:
As for Owens, he continues to make good strides as a face-up combo-forward of sorts with good positional size, vertical athleticism, a frame that continues to fill-out, and a skill-set that continues to expand. His shooting continues to trend in the right direction and looks projectable to the next level with continued development. He was a lob threat and transition finisher and also starting to do more off the dribble. This part of his game may not be college ready just yet, but there are clear signs of progression.
How about some highlights? This is a nine minute video from March 2024 that includes clips of Owens’ teammates at Western Reserve Academy, so you’re watching out for #3…… although #22 is fellow Marquette freshman Royce Parham.
Reasonable Expectations
The first part of setting a baseline for what we could expect from Owens this season is figuring how he fits into the Marquette rotation. There’s a slight problem in doing that this year because the departures of Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro might end up shaking up the roster in terms of who plays what part, but we haven’t quite gotten a chance to see what MU looks like on the floor yet, so we have to do our best here.
My default setting is “oh, well, worst case scenario, he’s Zaide Lowery’s freshman year,” just because of the physical similarities between the two young men…. except Lowery was actually kind of unremarkable for Marquette last year. 1.6 points and 1.4 rebounds in just under 10 minutes a game was just fine for Lowery, who didn’t have as high of a recruiting profile as Owens does. Is that fine for Owens when the Golden Eagles obviously have a backcourt/wing spot in the rotation available without Kolek around?
That feels not right for this section, but BartTorvik.com’s preseason projections aren’t that far off. The algorithm says that a freshman with Owens’ recruiting pedigree dropped into the Shaka Smart system and roster will give you 3.6 points and 2.3 rebounds, maybe an assist in about 12 minutes a night. If we concede the idea that Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell, and David Joplin are going to play as much as they want to, there’s maybe not that much space in the rotation elsewhere for Owens to jump past people in the lineup. Maybe somewhere in the middle of Lowery last year and the Torvik computers is about right for what’s reasonable to expect from a freshman coming in to a team that has clear expectations about being nationally relevant.
Why You Should Get Excited
At #63 in the 247 Composite rankings, Damarius Owens is the sixth highest ranked freshman in the Big East this season. By default, he comes in with the expectation that he won’t be an All-Freshman team performer if you figure that the five guys in front of him are favored for those five spots.
But it’s not a long jump from sixth to fifth, and that jump gets a lot shorter if Owens’ abilities earn him notable contributor minutes on a team that ends up easily headed to the NCAA tournament. I make this point because Thomas Sorber (#44) is at Georgetown and Jaiden Glover (#55) is at St. John’s. I don’t think either of those teams are shoo-ins for the NCAA tournament — Georgetown definitely isn’t — so it’s not hard to see Owens skating easily to All-Freshman honors.
I can’t go so far as to say that he’s a dark horse candidate for Freshman of the Year. Maybe he gets there, that would definitely be a reason to get excited. The fact of the matter is that UConn has Liam McNeeley, the #17 prospect in the country, and it’s his award to lose here. As long as he’s a rotation guy for a UConn team with a legitimate shot at a three-peat, McNeeley will coast here.
But maybe both McNeeley and Ahmad Nowell are Just Guys for the Huskies, and Creighton’s Jackson McAndrew isn’t quite ready for prime time? Maybe? If you squint a little bit? Maybe there’s a way for Damarius Owens to have a case?
Potential Pitfalls
I thought there was space for top 100 prospect Tre Norman to play some solid minutes for Marquette in the backcourt last season. I don’t really have a problem with what ended up happening with Norman’s freshman season — I gave him a 6 — but it wasn’t quite what you’d maybe think a top 100 freshman could/should be doing.
What if changing from high school basketball to college basketball is hard to do, and that’s ultimately just going to put a ceiling on what Owens can do this season? What if the repeated concept from that 247 Sports scouting report of “continues to develop/expand/progress” means that Owens has a much higher ceiling than whatever he is right now as a basketball player? Marquette has a veteran core of guys on the roster this year, and it’s hard to see Shaka Smart pushing someone aside to make sure that a freshman gets lots of minutes, unless it’s clearly obvious that said freshmen needs to be playing those minutes. If Owens isn’t immediately obviously one of the best eight guys on the roster, then maybe we’re just going to get a season full of growth and learning opportunities for him, and not much else.