Rowsey is Marquette’s savvy scoring machine
Marquette senior guard Andrew Rowsey is hard-wired to do two things on the basketball court: get buckets and enrage the opposition.
People can’t seem to fathom that the 5-foot-11, 180-pound Rowsey scores almost at will against NCAA Division I opponents. He can bomb home 25-footers, create space for a mid-range jumper or contort his body to finish over a towering center with a crafty layup.
He’s not shy about putting up shots or in- forming the crowd that he is feeling it.
“I’ve always had to prove myself growing up. I’ve always had that chip on my shoulder,” Rowsey said. “It can help me and it can hurt me. But I’ll take my chances on that.”
In the Golden Eagles’ first two Big East games, he racked up 66 points on 20-of-42 shooting while hitting 12 of 26 three-pointers. He also made all 14 of his free-throw attempts.
Those numbers shouldn’t surprise anybody who has followed Rowsey’s basketball journey. After all, this is a guy who scored 60 points in a game at Rockbridge (Va.) High School and dropped 41 against Radford when he was a freshman at UNC-Asheville.
Those eye-popping numbers are a byproduct of the countless jump shots he has hoisted in his life and the endless offensive skill work that he has done.
It started with Rowsey’s father, Chris, pushing him hard in Lexington, Va. Rowsey called his father “the toughest coach I’ve ever had.”
“Me and him, growing up, we would go to the gym every night. I think it started in middle school. We would go to the gym every night at 8 or 9 and stay a hour, two hours,” Rowsey said.
“He was always on me about getting my shots up, just building your foundation off working hard. He taught me how to shoot: my form, all the techniques. He taught me to keep it simple. I owe it all to him.”
Rowsey developed into a highly calibrated scoring machine.
He tends to get points in bunches. Against Xavier, Rowsey hit every shot in an 8-2 MU run that tied the game at 80 with 2 minutes 31 seconds remaining. However, he missed his last 3 three-point attempts in the 91-87 loss.
In the 74-65 victory over Georgetown, Rowsey sank three straight three-pointers in a 2:37 span to increase MU’s lead from 40-34 to 49-36.
“For me, once I see one go in, I think the next 10 are going in. That’s probably for any shooter. That’s probably how Kobe, LeBron, how they all feel,” Rowsey said.
A sharp-shooting point guard faces the eternal debate between hunting for one’s own shot and getting others involved. Rowsey has struggled with turnovers (a team-high 44) and his tendency to force some shots contributed to MU coach Steve Wojciechowski pulling the guard from the starting lineup for two games early in the season.
“There’s a fine line there when you have two guards that are elite-level scorers,” Wojciechowski said of Rowsey and Markus Howard. “But in order for us to be an elite-level offense, everybody has to be involved.”
Rowsey thinks he has a better feel for balancing scoring and distributing.
“You’ve got to read the game and what’s happening in the game,” he said. “That’s what good point guards realize, and that’s what Coach Wojo has been helping me a lot with this year, just trusting my teammates and trusting the offense.”
MU (10-4, 1-1 Big East) plays three of its next four conference games on the road, starting at Providence (10-5, 1-1) on Wednesday.