Damarius Owens Indicates He’ll Return To Marquette Men’s Basketball
The sophomore from New York gives head coach Shaka Smart four core players to reset his 2026-27 roster around when the portal opens.
If Damarius Owens can get healthy for a whole offseason and a whole regular season…… | Photo by Larry Radloff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images It seemed like things were pretty solid on Nigel James, Adrien Stevens, and Royce Parham returning to Marquette men’s basketball for the 2026-27 season coming out of the Big East tournament. James made it very directly clear about his position on the topic after being named Big East Freshman of the Year, while Adrien Stevens was also pretty clear about where he and Parham stood after MU’s loss to Xavier in New York. That was a while back though, and we hadn’t seen any other declarations of intent from anyone else on the roster since.
That’s kind of notable, since head coach Shaka Smart had already made it clear that he intends to “evolve” the roster for next season, and the math of Marquette’s scholarship situation is such that there are going to be guys leaving. As of Monday, it would appear that Damarius Owens will not be one of them, at least according to the Instagram video that he posted. That appears to be official team video edited together complete with the caption “Nowhere I’d rather be” and it’s co-posted with the official MU team account, too.
View this post on Instagram Owens has not had an immediately obvious impact in his two seasons and 60 games with the Golden Eagles. He averaged just 2. 6 points and 1.
2 rebounds in 9. 5 minutes per game as a freshman after spending the entire campaign plagued by a toe injury and a groin injury, the latter of which ended up needing offseason surgery. That may have set him back a little bit over the summer and into the preseason, and through Marquette’s loss at Purdue on December 13th this past season, Owens was sitting at just 2.