Shaka Smart is a program builder at Marquette. But he says it's time to dig into the transfer portal

Smart didn’t add any Division I transfers for four straight years before landing former Louisville forward/center Sananda Fru and former St. Thomas (Minnesota) guard Nolan Minessale this offseason. Marquette was the only power-conference program that hadn’t signed at least one Division I transfer during that four-year stretch.

The philosophy change came after Marquette went 12-20 last season, snapping a string of four straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

“We added two transfers,” Smart said. “If you look at that relative to the rest of our league or a lot of people that we play against, that’s a very small number. I think that depending on the spring, that number could be bigger. It could be right around there.”

This wasn’t the first time Smart had pursued transfers since arriving at Marquette. Smart’s first Marquette team had four transfers, including 2023 Big East player of the year Tyler Kolek and 2023 first-round draft pick Olivier-Maxence Prosper.

But after that 2021 roster overhaul, Smart hadn’t signed any other Division I transfers until now. The only transfer he had added from 2022-25 was Zach Wrightsil, who came from NAIA program Loyola New Orleans in 2022.

Smart didn’t need to use the portal because he had a group of quality players who stayed for multiple seasons while helping Marquette make annual NCAA Tournament appearances, including a Sweet 16 berth in 2024.

“The reason we decided to do that after the 21-22 season, my first season, (was) we just looked at our team, and at that time we felt like we had a really good group of young guys in our freshman and our sophomore class,” Smart said. “(We felt) that what would give us the best chance for them to evolve and grow and develop into really what they ended up developing into was if they had that type of runway, without bringing guys in ahead of them or on top of them. That also can affect retention, when you bring other guys in. Man, they really rewarded us for that.”

The turning point came when a senior class featuring Kam Jones, David Joplin and Stevie Mitchell left in 2025. Without any transfers to make up for those graduation losses, Marquette went backward last season.

Smart said he knew as the season progressed that he’d need to adjust his approach to roster construction. He then discovered how much recruiting transfers had changed since 2021.

“At that time, they couldn’t visit because of COVID,” Smart said. “Now a lot of them choose not to visit because they decide so fast. Some of that is due to the financial component of it because they don’t want to lose an opportunity, either. It’s warp speed. It’s communicating over Zoom, and there’s way, way more agent involvement than there was at that time, which is not a bad thing. It just is.”

Marquette is counting on Fru and Minessale to blend well with its incoming freshmen and a returning nucleus led by Big East freshman of the year Nigel James Jr. as the Golden Eagles attempt to bounce back.

Fru, a 6-foot-11 forward/center from Germany, averaged 9 points, 6.1 rebounds, 1.4 blocks and 1.2 assists while starting 29 games for Louisville last season.

Minessale had 19.8 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game at St. Thomas. Smart said the 6-5 guard rooted for Marquette while growing up in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin.

“It was still important for us that we brought guys in here who could positively affect the people around them from a relationship standpoint,” Smart said. “We also wanted guys with a competitiveness about them and a level of care and concern for all the things that go into winning, which you don’t want to take for granted. We feel like those two guys have those things.”

AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball