Wojciechowski likes the fit of MU’s transfers
April has become a busy month in college basketball as the landscape shifts with the coaching carousel and players transferring to other schools or declaring early for the NBA draft.
Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski likens the transfer market to free agency, and the Golden Eagles were very active in it this year.
With two open scholarship slots, MU came away with its top targets: Fordham’s Joseph Chartouny and Utah State’s Koby McEwen.
“If you ask the majority of coaches, you would prefer it not to be the case,” Wojciechowski said on Monday about the widespread player movement. “But it’s the reality of the world we live in. You have to be ready to move quickly.”
Both players ease the team’s need for backcourt help over the next three seasons.
The 6-foot-3, 205-pound Chartouny is a graduate transfer who is eligible to play next season. He is a heady distributor on offense (5.2 assists per game last season) and a disruptor on defense (2.9 steals).
“With next year’s team, and losing Andrew (Rowsey), and with the current makeup of our roster, we needed another guard,” Wojciechowski said. “A ball-handler. A decision-maker. Somebody who would complement the guys that will be playing next year.
“When we learned of Joseph’s decision, and we studied who he was as a player and as a person, we think he fits into our culture. We think he fits with the pieces on our team. And he provides experience. He provides a defensive mentality. He’s a good all-around basketball player.”
The 6-4, 205-pound McEwen will sit out one year and then be eligible to play two seasons. He is a guard who attacks the defense.
“Koby is a guy who has established himself as an elite player in the Mountain West Conference,” Wojciechowski said. “He was Mountain West freshman of the year and was all-league this year. And has really good size and can play multiple positions on the perimeter. He can do a lot of different things on the basketball court and I think his best basketball is ahead of him.”
Wojciechowski and his staff spent a lot of time over the past few weeks analyzing both players.
“When you see a kid is making a decision ... you dive in to learning about him,” Wojciechowski said. “That’s reading about him, understanding his stats, dissecting where he was from an advanced analytics standpoint. And then watching games, as many as you can.
“And then there’s a process from that, saying ‘Do we feel like he can help us? Does he fit what we need? Does he fit the bigger group?’ And then we get to know him as a person.”
Chartouny’s advanced analytics show a player who was ranked second in the NCAA in steal percentage last season (5.6%) and first in 2016-’17 (5.8%). The number tracks the percentage of opponent possessions that end with a steal by the player.
“Joseph is a guy who, in the course of his Fordham career, has done a few things at a very high level,” Wojciechowski said. “One is, from an assist standpoint, has really distributed the ball. And he’s been a guy who has really been a pest on a defense. I think those two areas are areas we can improve on and need to improve on.”
McEwen possesses a knack for getting to the free-throw line. He attempted 138 free throws as a sophomore and 179 as a freshman. Last season for MU, only Rowsey (194) and sophomore guard Markus Howard (112) attempted more than 100 free throws.
“He’s an attacking player,” Wojciechowski said of McEwen. “He’s a guy who puts the defense in a position to foul. He’s got a really good balance between his perimeter shooting and his ability to attack the basket. And we’re hopeful he’s a guy who shoots a lot of free throws.”
Both players are Canadians: McEwen is a Toronto native and Chartouny hails from Montreal.
“Canadian basketball has evolved to the point where they have an unbelievable grassroots program,” Wojciechowski said. “Their national program has a lot of young players but their young players are spectacular.
“Both these kids, they’re kind of that new age of really good Canadian basketball.”