BYU junior Matt Carlino was supposed to visit Purdue next weekend, and Marquette the weekend after that, or at least that was the case on Thursday evening, according to ESPN's Jeff Goodman. By Friday afternoon, Goodman was reporting that Carlino had decided on Marquette, and that was shortly followed up with a tweet directly from head coach Steve Wojciechowski.
While it's hard to say exactly what caused the sudden shift, it's definitely a positive for Coach Wojo that he laid out his plans thoroughly enough for Carlino to commit to transferring to Marquette without even taking a visit to Milwaukee.
Carlino is a 6'2", 170 lb. guard from Arizona. He averaged 13.7 points, 3.4 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 1.7 steals for BYU this past season. Carlino has earned his degree from Brigham Young University, and as such, he'll be able to transfer and play immediately starting this fall.
Between the comments on our post about Carlino's interest in MU, the post on our Facebook page about Carlino's commitment, and scrolling through tweets in the #mubb stream, it seems that there is a definite segment of the Marquette faithful that's not super excited about Carlino joining the team for his final season of NCAA eligibility. If your worry is about Marquette's lack of height in 2014-15, that's fair. If your worry is that Carlino is a career 33.5% three point shooter and Marquette already doesn't have any reliable shooters for 2014-15, that's fair, too.
But here's how Matt Carlino benefits Marquette:
- For the first time in five seasons, Marquette will have a point guard that's at least interested in shooting the basketball from behind the arc.
- Carlino will provide top flight passing and ball pressure, as he ranked in the top 100 in the country in both assist rate and steal rate last season.
- Marquette had three open scholarships for this fall, and getting a high major point guard to occupy one of those three slots takes a lot of pressure off of Coach Wojciechowski and his staff to find players who can contribute after just 25 days on the job.
- Derrick Wilson is no longer the starting point guard.
- Carlino only having one year of eligibility means he allows the coaching staff to immediately start recruiting to replace him for the fall of 2015.
- That 33.5% behind the arc translates to an effective field goal percentage of 50.3%, so that's perfectly acceptable.
I get the concerns. But to me, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives here. If you disagree, the comments section is all yours...