MU coach now has multiple choices
Wojciechowski has plenty of depth on roster
It’s a pretty good problem for Marquette men’s basketball coach Steve Wojciechowski to figure out.
In every game, Wojciechowski has to decide how best to deploy the deepest roster he’s had in five seasons at the school.
The answers likely will vary.
In the season-opening, 67-42 victory over Maryland-Baltimore County on Tuesday, Wojciechowski played nine players more than six minutes.
“The strength of our team is our team,” Wojciechowski said. “We have a group of guys who on any given night can be the spark plug or catalyst for our team playing at a higher level.”
MU got a huge lift from its bench Tuesday with sophomore center Theo John, freshman forward Joey Hauser, sophomore forward Jamal Cain and senior guard Joseph Chartouny combining for 26 points and 28 rebounds.
Wojciechowski often has talked about not wanting to get caught up in which player is starting or coming off the bench. He was shuffling players into the game constantly against UMBC, making 17 substitutions in the first half alone.
“Theo is a starter. Joey Hauser is a starter and Jamal Cain is a starter,” Wojciechowski said of the key reserves. “I don’t want to get into that. We have a group of guys who have committed to one mission and that is for Marquette to win.
“I don’t know who it is going to be on any given night, but we need all of our guys with the egos of ‘I’m important. I’m valuable and I’m going to do whatever it takes for our team to win.’ That’s the mind-set I think our team has.”
Chartouny, a graduate transfer from Fordham, has embraced playing in a deep rotation.
“It doesn’t matter who gets in or who doesn’t, “Chartouny said. “It’s more about the team and who is helping us at the moment to win the game. That’s what really matters.”
The depth and versatility also allows Wojciechowski to mix and match his lineups against opponents.
UMBC’s best threepoint shooters are two of its tallest players. The Retrievers don’t often play with a center on the blocks, so the mobile John was a better matchup for MU than traditional big men Ed Morrow, who played just 6 minutes 32 seconds, and Matt Heldt, who checked in for the final 1:02 of the game.
“They also had lineups out there at times when they had five guards,” Wojciechowski said. “And so maybe the best way for us to defend that was to put five guys who could switch and that’s when you saw Joey at the five (center).
“If you look at our schedule, we’re not going to play teams that their two best shooters are their fours and fives. So Matt Heldt and whoever will play.”
Heldt started 32 games last season. According to Wojciechowski, Heldt was “as happy as anyone in the locker room” after the victory over UMBC.
“He’ll do whatever it takes to win,” the coach said. “And (Tuesday) it was to play two minutes and the next game it may be 32 minutes. That’s the mind-set our kids have and that’s the message they are going to hear from us all the time.
“The strength of our team is our team. Everybody has to be ready. Everybody is important. At any given moment in any given game, a guy can be the catalyst. Whether he’s started, whether he’s played a lot in the game before or whether he’s coming off the bench.
“If we embrace that and our community embraces that, we have the chance to become a really good basketball team. If we’re ruined by those shallow-type things, then we won’t be as good as we’re capable of being.”