![NCAA Basketball: Southern Conference Tournament-Wofford vs Western Carolina](https://www.wisconsinsports.today/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/usa_today_8432258.0.jpg)
Don’t think we didn’t notice the addition of Stonehill and Western Carolina!
Back on June 24th, we published an update about the Marquette men’s basketball non-conference schedule. The athletic department had announced the schedule for the Marquette Challenge, which is the name for the multi-team event that Shaka Smart and the Golden Eagles are hosting in 2024-25. Along the way, we checked on the official schedule to confirm the timing of those three games relative to the other games that we already knew about.
At the time, there were only eight games on the schedule.
Now, thanks to the helpful tunes of some birdies on the internet, we know that there are ten games officially listed on GoMarquette.com.
Your new games are both home games:
Wednesday, November 27: Stonehill
Saturday, November 30: Western Carolina
Let’s learn what we can learn about these two, shall we?
Stonehill Skyhawks
2023-24 Record: 4-27, 2-14 NEC
Postseason: Nope, not even the NEC tournament
Final KenPom.com Ranking: #359
Final BartTorvik.com Ranking: #357
2024-25 BartTorvik.com Projection: #323
Head Coach: Chris Kraus, in his 11th season as head coach. He’s a 2006 alumnus of Stonehill, which is fun. He has a record of 148-143, although Stonehill went 130-99 in Division 2 under his guidance.
All-Time Series: This will be the first ever meeting, but that’s mostly because this will also be Stonehill’s third year in Division 1.
Stonehill has not had a lot of luck since moving up to Division 1, and 2024-25 doesn’t look like it’s going to be their year, either. It appears that they’re losing their top three scorers from last season — when they were 4-27, remember — leaving Shane O’Dell and his 9.0 per game scoring pace as the top returning option. Well, kind of. He started five games in November last season and then didn’t play again, so maybe it’s really Chas Stinson and his 7.0/game average as the leading returning scorer.
BartTorvik.com’s RosterCast lists Stonehill’s tallest player at 6’8”. That would be either Louie Semona or Ethan Meuser, with both men listed at that height and the official Stonehill roster lists them both at 205 pounds I suspect that Marquette may have a notable advantage on the inside between the combination of Ben Gold, Al Amadou, and Caedin Hamilton.
Western Carolina Catamounts
2023-24 Record: 22-10, 11-7 Southern Conference
Postseason: Lost their first SoCon tournament game to Furman in overtime.
Final KenPom.com Ranking: #110
Final BartTorvik.com Ranking: #112
2024-25 BartTorvik.com Projection: #340
Head Coach: Tim Craft, in his first season at WCU. He went 188-166 in 11 seasons at Gardner-Webb before being hired in Cullowhee.
All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 5-0. All five contests have been in Milwaukee, with four coming since the start of 2000. The most recent one was November 30, 2016, and Marquette led by 30 before the game got to halftime of a 90-44 victory.
The “suddenly dropping 230 spots in Torvik” part of the rundown above is explained by the “in his first season” part for head coach Tim Craft. WCU head coach Justin Gray took the job at Coastal Carolina this offseason, and, uh, yeah, that has led to a bit of a roster upheaval.
6’8” senior Bernard Pelote is the top returning scorer from last season and is currently projected by BartTorvik.com as their top contributor next season. He averaged 6.7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game last season….. so yeah, it’s a bit of a rebuild for Tim Craft, who does come in with a bit of experience coaching in the Carolinas. After all, Gardner-Webb and Western Carolina are only about a two hour drive away from each other. With that said, WCU is essentially in Tennessee while G-W isn’t all that far from Charlotte, so there’s a bit of a shift there.
It’s going to be interesting to see how Craft puts his rotation together. BartTorvik.com lists the Catamounts with a pair of 6’10” tall gentlemen in Vernon Collins and Chase McKey. Collins had a pair of relatively uninteresting years at Princeton before transferring a little bit closer to home in North Carolina, while McKey didn’t do much at all at Marshall in 2022 or 2024 while not playing at all in 2023. Both players could be classified as Tall Man” not “Big Man,” as Collins was listed at 224 pounds last year and McKey was at 202 pounds. Once again, that sounds like a bit of a mismatch for Marquette to exploit, but we’ll see what the rotation looks like when we get to late November.
Here’s what the schedule looks like on a calendar right now.
![A calendar for November 2024 & December 2024 with the dates of Marquette men’s basketball games marked in green](https://www.wisconsinsports.today/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IMG_0669.jpeg)
Marquette’s ability to fit in one more game — we’re at 10 non-conference games now, they played 11 last year — is going to come down to what the Big East calendar looks like. Last year, MU began league play on December 19th, which was a Tuesday. It feels like MU might have a free week before league play starts this season, but also December 9th through the 13th is the week of Final Exams for fall semester. I’m going to presume that Shaka Smart isn’t looking to lug his team around the country in the middle of finals, but that would leave December 14th or 15th available as a day to fit in one last non-con game. There was that rumored NC State game, but I have to figure that plan is dead in the water now since it hasn’t been announced already.