Are we set up for a major year from everyone’s favorite senior forward from Milwaukee?
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 move along to a senior who might be set up to have a spectacular season…….
David Joplin
Senior — #23 — Forward — 6’8” — 225 lbs. — Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Over the past three seasons, David Joplin has become more and more of a reliable cog in the Marquette basketball machine. He’s gone from chipping in a little bit off the bench in Year 1 to packing an offensive punch and playing nearly half the game off the bench to a nearly 28 minute a game starter. Over the past two years, Joplin has repeatedly shown why the coaching staff has given him the greenest of green lights when it comes to shooting, as he’s knocking down three-pointers at a 37.5% clip overall and 36.1% in Big East contests.
He’s even proven himself to be if not an impact player on the defensive end, but at least a contributor. I don’t think anyone’s running up and down Wisconsin Avenue shouting about David Joplin: Defensive Stalwart, but I keep opening up his KenPom.com page and being reminded that he ranked #258 in the country in block rate last season. On top of that, he was actually blocking shots at a better than average rate during the 20 game Big East slate.
You also rarely have to worry about him when he’s got the ball. No matter what Joplin’s role has been on the roster across the last three seasons, and no matter how you slice it, his turnover rate has never been in anything you would call a danger zone. He’s reliable, he makes plays, and he’s motivated to contribute. What more could you want?
Reasonable Expectations
And that’s where we get to his senior season and how things are different now.
It’s not a surprise that Marquette is going to have to figure out a way to generate offense without the passing and playmaking masterminds of Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro. I’m not telling you that Joplin is going to suddenly start hitting cutters with passes or anything like that. I am telling you that Marquette does need a little bit more — whether that’s just literally more shots going in or at least one new tiny facet of his game — from Joplin this season. The Golden Eagles have to make up nearly 29 points, nearly 12 rebounds, and nearly 11 assists a game. It has to come from somewhere and Joplin’s going to have to be a contributor in terms of stepping up.
Flat out, the BartTorvik.com preseason projection algorithm says that experienced guys like Joplin historically make a bump upwards in terms of their contributions in spots like this. The algorithm projects him to improve in all three primary counting stats: 14.1 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 1.4 assists per game. He’s slotted in as the #2 contributor overall behind Kam Jones, and yep, that’s pretty much what’s going to be asked of Joplin this season if the Golden Eagles want to execute on their team goals.
Why You Should Get Excited
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Marquette head coach Shaka Smart once said that David Joplin is the kind of guy and the kind of player that can lead the Big East in scoring. The fact of the matter is that his role on the team the last three seasons has been as such where that was just not going to happen.
Well, what better time than senior year for that prophecy to come true?
It’s probably going to take a certain amount of rejiggering of roles on the team, particularly from Kam Jones. Gary Parrish’s little homie from Memphis has been MU’s leading scorer for the past two seasons, but there’s a version of Marquette this year where Jones takes a step back from scoring and puts on his Tyler Kolek distributor hat instead. If that’s what it takes to win, that’s what it takes, but it will mean that someone else on the roster is going to have to pick up the scoring slack.
That person can be Joplin, and Kam Jones finished last year as the #7 scorer in the Big East, just 2.5 points off the lead. If Jones steps back and Joplin steps forward, there’s a pathway to the Jopwagon running wild all across America this year. We already know that Joplin has to pick things up a bit anyway because of what MU is losing from last year, why not go one step further and wrap up his collegiate career on a big note?
Potential Pitfalls
I can’t help but notice that David Joplin’s Per-40-Minutes numbers were down going from sophomore to junior year. As he went from 19.0 minutes per game off the bench to 27.7 minutes per game as a starter, Joplin was actually shooting it less from both two-point and three-point land on the court. He was getting to the free throw line ever so slightly less. He was getting fewer rebounds. His assists were cut by nearly half. Because he was shooting fewer threes and taking a hit in terms of conversion rate — 35.5% is still good, it’s just not 39.9% — Joplin’s scoring went down to the tune of nearly four points per 40 minutes.
I want to be clear about this: None of what I just said made David Joplin’s junior year a disappointment on any level, nor was it a bad performance either. He was a vital and crucial contributing member of a team that spent all but three weeks of the regular season ranked in the top 10 in the country. It’s just that he was, from a certain point of view, doing fewer David Joplin Things than he was doing when he was coming off the bench in relief of Olivier-Maxence Prosper.
The point here is that this is not a year for doing less for Joplin. He’s probably going to have to play a few more minutes than he did last year for Marquette to hit their peak performance as a team, and by nature of that, we might see his stats tick up a bit. But it also has to be coming from Joplin doing more on a minute-by-minute basis, not just because he’s playing more minutes. The margins of success for this team might be slimmer than they have been in the past, and it’s going to take a big effort from a lot of guys to make it all work. Joplin is one of the most important pieces in that regard.
Oh, and, uh, we’re going to need to see him be a bigger defensive contributor, too. Hoop Explorer has Marquette doing a bit more than six points per 100 possessions better on the defensive end when Joplin was on the floor last season. To be clear: Things weren’t bad with Joplin on the floor, you can win a lot of basketball games allowing under 96 points per 100 possessions. But they were better without him, and if the offensive efficiency might take a step back without Kolek and Ighodaro, the Golden Eagles have to make that up on defense, and that’s where Joplin contributing more over there comes into play.