Marquette men’s basketball moved to 2-0 on their Canadian tour on Thursday night, picking up an 89-59 victory over Trinity Western University. That’s the second of three games on the tour, and Marquette will be off on Friday before wrapping up the competitions on Saturday with a game against Fraser Valley at 4pm Central.
First, the YouTube highlights:
Postgame comments from junior forward Royce Parham:
And postgame comments from head coach Shaka Smart:
Once again, no video streaming for this one, so we’re just going off the live stats and box score to get a sense of what was going on.
Before I say anything else about what happened in this game, I want to point out that on July 26th, Purdue beat Trinity Western 82-66. The Boilermakers were up 21-13 at the end of the first quarter and allowed 18, 17, and 18 points in the next three quarters of the game. They led by 11 at the half, 42-31. Just let that roll around in your head for a second.
As for Marquette on Thursday night, Trinity Western got off to a 13-9 lead in the first quarter, and that was after MU scored the first two buckets of the game. That’s a 13-5 run by the Spartans in the first five minutes of the contest. There’s nothing terrifically dramatic about what happened there, MU missed some shots, committed one turnover, and TWU hit a trio of threes. The Spartans ended up shooting just 27.5% from long range for the entire game, so that balanced itself out at the end of 40 minutes. Anyway, it was 25-18 Marquette at the end of the first quarter, which is a 16-5 run to end the period. The final score allows me to do my favorite bit: Marquette ended the game on a 80-46 run.
Quarter-By-Quarter Scores
Same as the Calgary game, they played four 10 minute quarters
Quarter 1: Marquette 25, TWU 18
Quarter 2: Marquette 22, TWU 20
Quarter 3: Marquette 22, TWU 6
Quarter 4: Marquette 20, TWU 15
That’s up seven after 10 minutes, up nine at the half, and up 25 after 30 minutes.
We should point out: Marquette opened up the second half with an 11-0 run and ended up keeping Trinity Western scoreless for over 4:30. It’s actually a 16-0 run bridging back to a Damarius Owens three-pointer and an Ethan Johnston tip-in to end the second quarter.
G: Nigel James
G: Adrien Stevens
G: Nolan Minessale
F: Royce Parham
C: Sananda Fru
Same as it was the night before against Calgary
And by that, I mean when they checked in for the first time.
Damarius Owens: 6:58, first quarter
Michael Phillips: 5:49, first quarter
Josh Clark: 3:43, first quarter
Ethan Johnston: 2:24, first quarter
Ian Miletic: 10:00, second quarter
Alex Egbuonu: 5:43, second quarter
Caedin Hamilton: 7:29, third quarter
Did Not Play: Nash Walker, Colton Crowdis, and Braeden Brenn. None of the three played the night before against Calgary, so no surprises here, especially for Walker as he rehabs back from shoulder labrum surgery back in March. I’m going to tell you this right now: I am starting to lean towards not bothering with a Colton Crowdis player preview in October.
Effective Field Goal Percentage
Marquette: 46.95%
Trinity Western: 39.2%
Marquette: 12.5%
Trinity Western: 22.5%
Offensive Rebounding Rate
Marquette: 45.3%
Trinity Western: 170%
Marquette: 26.8%
Trinity Western: 20.0%
Marquette: 1.11
Trinity Western: 0.74
Leading Scorer: Royce Parham, with 15 points on 5-for-11 shooting in a team high 27 minutes.
Leading Rebounder: Royce Parham, with 13 (a double-double!)
Leading Passer: Nigel James (16 minutes), Adrien Stevens (22 minutes), and Nolan Minessale (20 minutes), all with four each to get MU to 18 helpers on 35 buckets
Leading Thief: Nigel James, Adrien Stevens, Nolan Minessale, and Alex Egbuonu (16 minutes), all with two steals each
Leading Swatter: Royce Parham, with three of MU’s six blocks, and the only player with more than one
Foul Merchants: This was just a line on the Calgary report, but I want to break it out into a bit of a section here. Sananda Fru snagged his second foul of the game with 9:06 left in the first half, while Nigel James got his second foul with 3:24 left in the first quarter and his third foul with 4:23 left in the second quarter. Both men ended up with just three fouls for the entire game, but that is a slightly troubling note given it’s an exhibition game and all. James was pulled out of the game pretty much immediately after his second and third and sat out for the rest of the quarters in question, while Fru was lifted after his second, but returned for three more minutes before halftime.
Since we noted Josh Clark’s relatively unimportant 12 points on 6-for-6 shooting in the Calgary game, it’s worth returning to the topic here as his role in this game was drastically different. As you can see from the Order Of Substitutions section, Clark got into the game in the first quarter, and Sananda Fru’s second foul probably boosted Clark’s playing time in the second quarter, too. Clark checked in for the first time after Marquette had restored the lead to their side of the scoreboard, so he didn’t play a part in responding to the 13-9 deficit. He ended up finishing with 8 points on 4-for-6 shooting with four rebounds and a foul in 14 minutes of action, which is fine for a back up big man. He was also a +5 for his 14 minutes…. and that was rescued by a +7 in the final five minutes of the game when he checked in with Marquette up 79-56.
The Caedin Hamilton Of It All
Five minutes after playing 18 minutes against Calgary the night before and generally speaking not showing anything on that box score that said “hoo boy, that’s a massive issue.” Five minutes, none til the second half, and most of it as a 4 minute chunk in the third quarter from 7:29 when he first appeared until 3:20 left in the period. Opened up the fourth quarter on the floor, committed his only foul of the night, and then exited 30 seconds later. With no game video, I can’t provide context to any of this, but quite simply: Seems bad, right?
As I mentioned on Wednesday night, Marquette’s success in 2026-27 does hinge on the production they get from Sananda Fru and Nolan Minessale, the two transfers on the roster. Let’s see what they did here.
Fru: 10 points on 5-for-11 shooting, including 0-for-2 on three-pointers, nine rebounds, an assist, three fouls (all in the first half), and one turnover in 18 minutes
Minessale: 10 points on 3-for-12 shooting, including 2-for-8 on three-pointers, 2-for-4 from the free throw line, five rebounds, four assists, two steals, two fouls, and one turnover in 20 minutes
I’ve got questions about shot selection for both men here, as they combined to shoot 6-for-13 inside the arc and that’s obviously better than their combined 2-for-10 on three-point attempts. The question about shot selection bleeds over to the entire team, as Marquette shot 7-for-37 on long range attempts in the game, which is under 19%. More importantly, MU attempted 45% of their overall shots behind the arc after getting just 32% of their shots from long range against Calgary one night earlier. The big offenders here in addition to Minessale are Adrien Stevens (2-for-7) and Michael Phillips (0-for-6). Without seeing any of these shots because the athletic department steadfastly refuses to provide a live streaming broadcast for any of these games even though Purdue was getting praised for getting thousands of fans to purchase the streams of their games which leads to money for scholarships for the Canadian college involved, I can’t give you an assessment of “well, you want these guys shooting these shots when they’re that open” or something like that.
If you ignore the shooting numbers, these are both great performances for the limited minutes involved. If you do a 50% boost for a 50% jump in minutes: 15 points and 13 rebounds for Fru, 15 points, seven rebounds, six assists for Minessale. I think these are great contributions overall — at least without seeing how they played — it’s just that the shooting leaves you a little bit cold at a glance. The whole team struggled with shot selection — 62% shooting on shots inside the arc, so it’s not like those weren’t falling either! — so I don’t want to single them out too much.
Okay, what did you see in the brief highlight clip or discover in the box score that caught your attention? Pipe up in the comments, that’s what they’re there for…..
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