With today's news that freshman point guard Reggie Smith has decided not to return to Marquette for the second semester, it might be time to change the music in Marquette's pregame introductions from U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" to Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust."
If you're scoring at home, this is the fourth** player to transfer from Marquette in the last year-and-a-half:
- First was Brett Roseboro, who left town before his first official practice;
- Then came Jeronne Maymon, who jumped ship at midterm last year when Coach Buzz wouldn't accede to Tim Maymon's outlandish demands;
- Then came Yous Mbao, a project player who Coach Buzz moved heaven and earth to sign in the spring of 2009;
- And now Smith, a dynamic point guard from Chicago who, according to Todd Rosiak's latest blog post, transferred after a three-minute meeting with his stepdad and Coach Buzz. Like Maymon, Smith apparently had concerns about his playing time; while he'd started five of the eight games in which he played, Reggie didn't get off the bench in Kansas City during the CBE Classic and got a DNP vs. UW-Milwaukee before sitting out the last two games due to illness.
** I've left out mention of the D.J. Newbill fiasco of last summer, even though it probably warrants mentioning here. Like everybody save for Coach Buzz and D.J. himself, I don't know what the hell actually happened there.
The rumor mill will crank into overdrive now regarding the real reason that Reggie transferred -- you'll hear that he didn't have the stones to compete with Junior Cadougan for playing time, that he didn't like Coach Buzz, that his stepdad is a helicopter parent in the mold of TIMMAY!, that Coach Buzz filled the kid's head with visions of 25-minutes-per and then failed to deliver, et cetera, et cetera.
Whatever the reason, Marquette is now desperately thin at point guard as it enters Big East play, with converted shooting guard Dwight Buycks and sophomore Junior Cadougan the only remaining point guards on the roster. Last year, when the loss of Maymon left an already-tiny team even thinner in the front court, Marquette managed to rally behind Lazar Hayward and a cast of misfits and newbies. Will the same hold true this year? We can only hope.