Marquette guard Markus Howard failing to get attention for his remarkable success

Kevin McNamara | Providence (R.I.) Journal

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Steve Wojciechowski owns a very good point.

After watching his star guard, Markus Howard, light up scoreboards for four years, it’s downright laughable when conversations about the Oscar Robertson, Naismith or Wooden awards begin and do not include his guy. When an All-America list is crafted and the Marquette star’s name isn’t quickly penciled into the backcourt it’s borderline embarrassing.

Wojciechowski has seen a lot of basketball in his career. He starred on some very good Duke teams and assisted Mike Krzyzewski for 15 seasons when the Atlantic Coast Conference was stacked with stars. He knows a great player when he sees one and Howard’s star turn isn’t being celebrated enough.

“I don’t believe Markus gets the national attention that he deserves,” the coach said. “My staff says they hear talk about the national player of the year or All-Americans and sometimes Markus’ name isn’t even mentioned? That just shows people aren’t doing their homework or because the kid has done it for so long and so well, they’ve become numb to it.”

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We’ll excuse the nation’s sporting media and follow option B for a bit. From the moment he arrived in Milwaukee, the 5-11 guard has been shooting and scoring at a dizzying clip. He’s currently at 2,582 career points, good for a 21.2 average, and is leading the country this season with 27.3 points a game. While he shoots, shoots and shoots some more, he also pleases the modern-day stat geeks by operating at a highly efficient clip. Howard makes 44 percent of his field-goal attempts and 42 percent of his 3-pointers. No one produces such high levels of efficiency at matching lofty usage rates. That’s why he’s in the top three in Kenpom’s Player of the Year standings.

Howard’s games are must-watch, or at least must-follow on social media, because you never know when he’s going to catch fire and string up crazy numbers. Numerous times in his career "Markus Howard" has begun trending on Twitter. Twenty-seven times he’s scored 30 or more points. He’s also cracked 40 seven times and enjoyed three 50-point explosions.

“What he’s done over the course of his career is historical and for whatever reason people have become numb to it,” Wojciechowski said. “The consensus is this is as good as the league has been since its reformation and he’s averaging nearly 30 points a game in the Big East. It’s like `Markus has 40, Markus had 30, Markus had a quiet 31.’ I think that’s crazy.”

The other nine coaches around the Big East have already paid for the limousine to make sure Howard does indeed finish his eligibility this spring. They’re tired of drawing up the traps and the ball screen switches to slow Howard down and still see him with 30 points at the end of a night.

“There aren’t a lot of guys like that in the country,” said Villanova coach Jay Wright. “You play against a lot of great players but there’s something really special about a guy that can get 30, 35 in a game. Now you talk about 50, that’s a whole different level.”

College basketball has seen plenty of great scorers before. Chris Clemons left behind 3,225 points – third best in NCAA history – when he graduated from Campbell University last season. Other elite scorers that come to mind include all-timers like Lionel Simmons (La Salle), Doug McDermott (Creighton) and Hersey Hawkins (Bradley), each of whom cracked over 3,000 points in glorious careers. Nobody has topped the 3,667 points that Pete Maravich scored in three years at LSU.

Like the other-worldly Pistol Pete, Simmons, McDermott and Hawkins all won various national player of the year awards. So did BYU’s Jimmer Fredette in 2011.

Not to knock the Metro Atlantic (Simmons), Missouri Valley (Hawkins) or Mountain West (Fredette), but Howard is shining on a Top 25 team in a Big East that is this season’s top-rated NET conference. Last week Howard passed Syracuse’s Lawrence Moten as the Big East’s all-time leading scorer and he’s on track to break McDermott’s season records for points and scoring average in conference games.

So back to Coach Wojo’s original point. It’s easy to appreciate what Obi Toppin is doing at Dayton, the all-around brilliance of Payton Pritchard at Oregon, Big East brother Myles Powell at Seton Hall and Mr. Inside/Outside Luke Garza at Iowa. But take a good look at Howard, and don’t take players like him for granted. He’s going to live on in the record books for a long, long time.