Matt Velazquez

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Back in March, the Marquette men's basketball team ended its season with a meeting, one in which the bottom line was known before head coach Steve Wojciechowski said anything. The Golden Eagles hadn't been selected for the NCAA Tournament or NIT and their season was over.

It marked the third straight season the Golden Eagles missed the postseason entirely. A streak of that length hadn't happened at Marquette since the turn of the century.

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"That's one feeling that me and my teammates don't want to feel again and we want to make sure it doesn't happen," redshirt junior Duane Wilson said Wednesday at the team's media day.

In conversations around Kasten Gym, Wilson's teammates echoed his sentiments. Turning things around is something they talk about — either as a team or among themselves — on an almost daily basis. Even the players who don't talk as much speak volumes with their actions, getting into the gym early and often, hitting the weight room and working toward a level of success they all want but have yet to achieve at Marquette.

"It's been so long since Marquette's been in the postseason and the seniors here haven't been in one yet," senior center Luke Fischer said. "That's our goal. We wanted to accomplish that last year, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I think this year we have all the pieces, we have the mentality and I think we're ready for it."

Achieving that goal will be an uphill battle as Marquette, picked seventh in the Big East preseason coaches' poll, must reinvent itself for the third straight season under Wojciechowski.

When Wojciechowski took over for the 2014-'15 season, he spent much of the season with a roster of eight scholarship players. Last season, his squad featured just four holdovers from his first team, with five freshmen, including Big East freshman of the year Henry Ellenson, carrying much of the load.

Entering the 2016-'17 campaign, which begins on Nov. 11 against Vanderbilt in a game to be played at the U.S. Naval Academy, Marquette finally brings back the bulk of its squad. The one glaring exception is Ellenson, who became the 18th pick in the NBA draft after leading the Golden Eagles with 17.0 points and 9.7 rebounds per game while statistically producing one of the best freshman seasons Marquette has ever seen.

While he admits losing Ellenson is a big, but not unexpected, blow, Wojciechowski doesn't see why that should stop the "significant strides" he believes the program has made during his two-plus years in Milwaukee.

"I'm optimistic," Wojciechowski said. "I feel like this can be the best team we've had since we've been here and the league's better as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing how far and how well we can play."

Marquette can't replace Ellenson with any one player; few programs could.

Unlike the past two seasons, though, the Golden Eagles will have the depth to replace Ellenson's output by committee. They bring back their top six scorers outside of Ellenson and added four high-percentage shooters in UNC-Asheville transfer Andrew Rowsey, USC graduate transfer Katin Reinhardt and freshmen Markus Howard and Sam Hauser.

Last season, Marquette was a top-50 team in terms of two-point percentage and below average from long range. This season, with an undersized roster that includes 10 guards and two traditional bigs, the Golden Eagles hope to find more offensive balance, push the pace, stretch the floor and barrage opponents with interchangeable shooters all along the perimeter.

"The era of the undersized team is here and has been here," Wojciechowski said. "This isn't like some unusual experiment, like, 'Oh my gosh I can't believe they're doing that.' Well, the national champions played four guards and one big guy. ... If you're undersized it doesn't mean you're undermanned.

"We're going to take a lot of threes and we have good three-point shooters. We need to make sure that the threes are quality threes and that we work for them to make sure they're open in rhythm with space and time. I'm not afraid of shooting a lot of threes."

Where Ellenson's loss hurts most is on the glass and in the interior of the defense. The solution will again come by committee, with Wojciechowski putting a higher emphasis on guards going for rebounds and full-court defense that makes it harder for opponents to move the ball across the court, let alone into the paint.

"On the defensive end we need to be disruptive while being disciplined," Wojciechowski said.

Being able to play that high-energy style at both ends, one that Wojciechowski has wanted to employ since he took over, is the result of having depth for the first time in three years. It also helps to have a glut of versatile guards to sub in and out without a marked drop in quality.

"If we're playing to the vision that I have of this team we're not going to have guys playing 36, 34, 32 minutes because I want to play hard enough where that's just not possible," Wojciechowski said. "I would like to go nine, maybe even 10 deep. The thing about depth is depth has to play well, but I think we have guys who can."

As Marquette adjusts to its new style and focuses on the task of building a team worthy of the postseason, its players aren't practicing in a bubble. They know they were picked seventh in the Big East. They know the other Division I schools in Wisconsin have made it to the NCAA Tournament more recently than Marquette. They know that Marquette hasn't made the NCAA Tournament since the Big East realigned, with the only other team to share that ignominious honor being DePaul.

There's only one way to change the narrative.

"It fuels the fire," Fischer said. "Being picked seventh again at Big East media day it was hard to see. You get a feel of what everyone else thinks about you around the Big East. We're going to use that once again to fuel us and to get us going and to make sure we end the season the right way."