The 2026-27 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 freshmen going in alphabetical order by last name then doing the same for the three transfers, then moving on to the redshirt freshmen. After that, it’s the seven players returning from last year’s roster going in order of average minutes played per game 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:
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Why You Should Get Excited
With that out of the way, we move along to the incoming transfer that’s going to be doing a bit of a homecoming in his arrival at Marquette…
Nolan Minessale
Junior — #4 — Guard — 6’5″ — 195 lbs. — Brookfield, Wisconsin
Let’s start in the most important place for our ongoing and continuing conversation of Nolan Minessale, Marquette Golden Eagle. From his official team bio: min-eh-SAL-ee. You can go to his bio page and listen to him say it himself, if you’d like.
Nolan Minessale comes to Marquette by way of the transfer portal after two years at St. Thomas up in Minnesota. Is it hard to type Minnesota after typing Minessale multiple times in this article already? Dear reader, it is not easy, I’ll say that much. Minessale started all 68 games of his tenure with the Tommies, averaging over 26 minutes a game as a freshman and over 31 minutes as a sophomore. He was a double digit scorer in both seasons, but jumped up to 19.8 per game last season. For his full career, Minessale averaged 15.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.4 steals per game. He also led the Summit League in blocks per game as a freshman at 1.1 a night, but that did go way down in his sophomore year, and no, I am not expecting a 6’5″ guard to return to that average in the Big East.
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The intriguing parts of how Minessale fits in at Marquette come by way of his assists, his steals, and his ability to get to the free throw line. Sure, the fact that he led St. Thomas in scoring last year is neat, especially because he shot just short of 60% on two-pointers as a 6’5″ guard. He also led the Tommies in assists, and KenPom.com marks him in the top 180 in the country in assist rate. Minessale might have actually been limited ever so slightly in his assists because Austin Herro averaged 3.5 a game for UST last season, but I suspect that several of his assists came by way of Minessale buckets.
The 1.6 steals per game last year converts to a KenPom steal rate of 3.1%, which was #173 in the country last year. For comparison’s sake: Adrien Stevens was #212 at 3.0%. That’s very good, obviously, but it’s still not the most interesting thing about Minessale’s profile to me. That’s his #40 ranking in fouls drawn per 40 minutes. Getting fouled to the tune of 6.5 times per 40 minutes led to Minessale ranking #195 in the country in free throw rate last season, as he shot more than half as many free throws attempts (232) as he did field goal attempts (451).
The closest Marquette rotation player last season to a 50% free throw attempt rate was Chase Ross at 42.7%, which ranked #363 in the country. No one else in MU’s rotation after the late season turnaround cleared 40%, and that’s why the Golden Eagles were #243 in the country in that department as a team last year. There’s reasonable questions to be asked as to whether or not Minessale was victimizing Summit League defenders and if he’s capable of drawing fouls like that in the Big East. However: In five games against what KenPom calls top 100 opponents last year, Minessale had a free throw rate of 54%, better than his season average.
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Reasonable Expectations
Well, let’s start here: Nolan Minessale’s probably not leading the team in scoring this season like he did last year at St. Thomas. It’s a safe bet that those honors will go to Nigel James for a second straight year, although I presume that the sophomore point guard will tell you that he doesn’t care about that as long as MU wins. The point is that we can’t expect Minessale to put up 20 points a game. That may have been what St. Thomas needed, but between James and Royce Parham, it’s not what Marquette needs.
The flip side of that is I don’t quite agree with where the BartTorvik.com projection algorithm has Minessale. 7.3 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game in just short of 22 minutes per game? I get that we’re trying to move an All-Summit League performer into the Big East and some regression is likely, but that seems wrong. Minessale was the third starter in the backcourt next to James and Adrien Stevens on the three game trip through Canada. I feel like a guy in competition for that role all season — head coach Shaka Smart said that spot’s not settled as of the open practice on October 3rd — should probably do better than 7/3/2 in 22 minutes. If Minessale is not the starter and that job goes somewhere else, then maybe 7/3/2 as a super sub covering any of the three backcourt/wing spots isn’t out of the question.
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No matter what Minessale’s role turns out to be, Marquette is going to need his playmaking abilities to shine through. Maybe it’s not going to be at the level of what he did with the Tommies last year, but one of MU’s biggest flaws even after the midseason reorganization was a lack of creators on the floor with James. Shaka Smart’s Marquette teams were at their best when they had Tyler Kolek and Kam Jones (and a little bit of Stevie Mitchell and Oso Ighodaro) able to activate the offense. Whatever Minessale can add to the team there is beneficial. Same goes for his ability to 1) hit two-pointers and 2) get to the line. MU’s two-point shooting wasn’t awful last year at #147 in the country in shooting percentage, but given that they were #4 in the shortest average attempt distance per KenPom, they weren’t good. They were #243 in the country at free throw rate, and if Minessale’s talents improve both the shooting percentage and the rate of free throws being attempted, that’s a huge boost to the offensive end of things for the Golden Eagles.
Why You Should Get Excited
Nolan Minessale averaged 10.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 3.3 assists per game on the Canada trip. That was in 19 minutes per contest, so it’s possible that this is a fairly solid example of what he’s capable of playing with this set of teammates. I know, this is the Get Excited section, and 10/3/3 isn’t knock your boots off exciting. It is proof of concept that this particular addition to the roster is going to work, and that’s what’s important here. He also snared exactly two steals in each of the three games, and while I’m not going to expect anyone to ever average two steals a game, it’s nice to see that part of Minessale’s game pop up here as well.
Also important: Minessale shot 33% on three-pointers and 64% on two-pointers on the trip. That 33% is even weighed down a bit by a 2-for-8 in the second game, and that was a game where no one (7-for-37, 19%) was hitting shots particularly well. Yes, I know, all three Canadian teams were kind of overmatched, it was probably much easier to score at the rim than it will be against Mercyhurst much less against Big East teams, etc., etc. You still gotta go out there and actually overmatch them, and that’s definitely what happened here.
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Lastly, and this is more of an emotional thing than anything else: It might be kind of fun to see a kid from Brookfield that won a state title with Marquette University High School hitting shots and making plays in blue and gold at Fiserv. That’s one of the fun things that can happen in the current transfer portal era. Minessale was an unrated and unranked prospect coming out of high school according to 247 Sports. If he had been recruited out of MUHS by this coaching staff, none of us would have expected to see him on the court based on the recruiting profile. But there was absolutely going to be a Division 1 team that could bring him in, and now Minessale gets to play in front of friends and family back home because he proved he belongs at that level. That’s a neat story, and watching it play out this season (and hopefully the next two as well!) should be pretty fun.
Potential Pitfalls
I have not watched every single Nolan Minessale three-point attempt from his time at St. Thomas. There’s 198 of them, and I presume that the Marquette coaching staff has watched all of them. The fact of the matter is that an offense that is going to be layup and three-pointer oriented — and I’m presuming that will stay mostly the same even with the departure of offensive guru Nevada Smith to the Siena head coaching job — needs reliable three-point shooting in order to make the layup part work. Multiple reliable shooting threats means defenders have to stay home and not collapse on a driver, that gives the driver more space to get to the rim.
Nolan Minessale is a career 30.8% three-point shooter. That’s not a reliable shot. 17-for-54 (31.5%) as a freshman, 44-for-144 (30.6%) as a sophomore. In 11 career games against what KenPom.com calls top 100 opponents — meaning the kind of opposition that MU is going to see in 20 Big East games and six non-conference games this season, roughly speaking — Minessale is shooting 7-for-32 on three-pointers, or 21.9%.
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This isn’t a problem that’s solved by saying “oh, but that’s as the leading scorer for St. Thomas, put him next to high major shooters and he’ll have more open shots.” Nope. Carter Bjerke shot more threes for the Tommies last year than Minessale did, and he hit nearly 45% of them. Five UST players launched at least 100 three-pointers last year, and four of them hit at least 33.9% of them. Minessale’s the other one. He had shooters around him and just wasn’t knocking the shots down.
This is why actually seeing the attempts is important to the discussion. If he’s fine on catch and shoot attempts, then there’s nothing to worry about, just get him shots he’s good at hitting. But if he’s just not good no matter how he gets the shot, and his defense isn’t quite up to stopping Big East wings, AND he’s not getting to the rim or drawing fouls because of the step up in competition… and on top of all of that, Minessale happens to play a position where Marquette has a lot of options, even if they are mostly unproven right now? This isn’t a season where Shaka Smart can just hope that it comes together by the time we get to February. If it’s not working, it’s not working, and the Golden Eagles have to go with options that are working.
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