Unpopular Opinion: Shaka Smart Did A Heck of A Job Coaching Marquette In 2026

gotta admit, Shaka Smart did a heck of a job changing directions this season. | Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images You might remember that back in mid-December, I penned an article on this website titled “ Is Marquette Getting Worse? ” That was published in the wake of Marquette men’s basketball losing 96-76 to Wisconsin on December 6th and just one day before the Golden Eagles took a 79-59 loss on the road against Purdue .

The ultimate conclusion was that with an absence of proof that Shaka Smart’s team was showing signs of improvement in any particular aspect 10 games into the season, it becomes very easy to point to declines in several things as proof that the team was, in fact, getting worse. Nine days after I published that article, I cracked open a thread over on Bluesky to start something I had the idea of doing in the wake of the Getting Worse article. I started documenting, game by game, exactly where Marquette’s Game Scores were over on BartTorvik.

com . Game Score is definitely not a perfect metric to measure a team’s improvement, but it is a compilation of quality of play with a dose of adjustment for opponent quality. Obviously: Losing to the #1 team in the country on the road by one point is a better performance than beating the #365 team in the country at home by one point.

The impetus for actually starting the thread? I started it on December 21st, one day after Marquette took an 84-63 loss at Creighton right before going on a nine day break for Christmas. At the time, this is what the graph of Marquette’s Game Scores looked like: Yeah, I’d say “that was the worst game of the year” was a good time to start tracking exactly how bad things were getting for Marquette.