Marquette Men’s Head Basketball Coach Shaka Smart is breaking the mold when it comes to modern team building. In an era of increasing player movement, with most coaches turning to the transfer portal each offseason to restock their rosters, Smart has prioritized investing in those within the program — a strategy Marquette affectionately calls “Our Way.”
Smart sat down with Mike Broeker, vice president and director of athletics, during Marquette’s Reunion Weekend to discuss his approach and how it aligns with the program and Marquette’s values.
The following excerpt of their discussion has been edited for clarity and brevity:
Mike Broeker: We want to talk about “Our Way.” It’s different. It’s really an identity and how the program is built around our core values of relationships, growth and victory. If you were trying to give people a high-level view of what that looks like in the room, how would you present those three values?
Shaka Smart: Relationships, growth and victory. If you think back to your college experience, whether you participated in athletics or not, those were three of the most important things that went into you having a successful and enjoyable experience. It’s really what binds us together.
I get asked so many times, “How do you get your guys to come back in the midst of the craziness of the transfer portal?” For example, did you know 48% of basketball players at the Division I level put their name in the transfer portal? The No. 1 reason is relationships.
The growth, if you think back to your experience at Marquette, how much you transformed going from a 17-, 18-year-old kid coming here, not really knowing what you didn’t know, to someone that by the time you left had more purpose, vision, empathy, perspective. That’s what we’re trying to do, as well, using basketball as a vehicle.
The victory part — we’re all trying to win at whatever it is that we’re doing. We’re all trying to find success as a person, as a performer. For us, that’s most easily measured, at least publicly, with wins, losses and statistics. But honestly, more important than that, it’s seeing the transformation these guys make and then seeing the success that they find.
Broeker: I want to touch on why we view being pro retention as the way — the advantages of it and the intentionality that goes into that.
Smart: College athletics has undergone a major shift, not just in basketball, but I’d argue the effect on basketball has been more significant than in other sports. There are student-athletes, not just in basketball, that literally spend each year of their college career at a different college or university.
For us, we are not against transfers. Tyler Kolek and O-Max Prosper were transfers. Those guys were really good for us. But we are in favor of, and I actually got this from Travis Diener, who is as thoughtful and good a representative of Marquette basketball and Marquette University as we’ve had in our program in the last few decades. Travis said to me, “I just think it makes sense to reward the guys who have worn the jersey.” I think about that often. It just makes a lot of sense.
Three years ago, we were coming off of our first season. We had a nice season. We did better than most people thought. We made the NCAA Tournament. But we wanted more, we wanted better. We wanted to keep making strides. Our top returning player by far was an all-conference player, first-team All-Big East player. He had put his name in the NBA Draft. Three years ago today was the deadline where he had to decide, “Do I keep my name in the NBA Draft, or do I pull it out and come back to Marquette?” We were all on pins and needles. We wanted him back for obvious reasons. This guy would have been preseason player of the year in the Big East. He stayed in the draft. This day, three years ago, it was a challenging day because it felt like a little bit of a setback.
The next year, we won the Big East regular season and tournament. The reason we won is because we chose to prioritize the guys who had worn the jersey that wanted to come back, which was everyone else who wasn’t a senior. Those guys got so much better in that offseason three years ago. I’m meeting with our guys and using that summer as a template for us.
Once you start bringing in a bunch of transfers, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It impacts your roster and your program. We have made a decision and a commitment to the guys in our program. Yes, we could have gone in the transfer portal and recruited some guys, but we feel like it would have stunted their growth. We feel if we value growth, that would be a contradiction, and we believe that we can be a lot better than people think without taking transfers.
Broeker: You talk about that summer after your first year. Watching their commitment to their own growth and your commitment to their growth really heartened in me how important player development is and how well you and your staff have done it here since you have gotten here. You take a ton of pride in it, but importantly, the players take a ton of pride in it.
Smart: It’s so much fun. Seeing someone grow, seeing someone become a better version of themselves. That’s really why I coach. I was raised by a single mom, and I didn’t have my dad around. So, coaches put their arm around me and helped me become a better version of myself. That’s why I got into coaching, in addition to my maniacal desire to win.
We were running today, and two of our graduate assistants were with us. These guys just transitioned from being on our team — they graduated earlier this month — and now they’re on our coaching staff. When you’re a graduate assistant, your No. 1 job is to be available and accessible for the players, whether it’s to pass or rebound for them or be a shoulder to cry on. One of our graduate assistants, he says to me, “It is so much fun when I’m rebounding for one of our guys and then I get to see them in the game go do what we worked on.”
Sean Jones said, “Hey coach. They’ve got the transfer portal. We’ve got the transformation portal.”
