Marquette Basketball: Duane Wilson Has A Long List Of Possible Transfer Destinations

As previously announced, Marquette guard Duane Wilson will be graduating in May and exercising his right to transfer for his final year of eligibility.

On Monday, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports and FanRag Sports tweeted out Wilson’s current list of possible destinations. Wilson is taking a look at Texas A&M, Arkansas, Nevada, Georgia Tech, and Virginia.

I’m not going to get into a hardcore breakdown of each team’s roster and which one might be the best landing spot for Wilson. I will, however, say that if Wilson ends up wearing blue and orange in Charlottesville, I’m going to pretend that he played three years for Marquette, graduated, and disappeared from college basketball forever. If I can believe that there were only three seasons of Alias and only four seasons of The West Wing, I can convince myself that Wilson never played for Virginia.

Seriously, though, Duane: Please don’t go play for Virginia. I mean, God bless you if you have the grades to get into grad school at UVa, because then you’re smarter than me, but I really don’t want to have to pretend to like Tony Bennett’s version of basketball just because you’re there.

Of the other five schools, one in particular jumped out at me, and that’s Georgia. You might remember Georgia Bulldogs from Marquette’s 89-79 victory down in Athens at the start of December. The reason why this is particularly interesting is because the Bulldogs will be coming to the BMO Harris Bradley Center at some point during the 2017-18 non-conference season in the back half of the home-and-home series between the two teams. It’s a Big East conference rule that players are not allowed to transfer within the league, but other than that, it’s always appeared that head coach Steve Wojciechowski has never tacked on any other restrictions on a player leaving the MU program. It wouldn’t be surprising if he had restricted Wilson from going to Georgia given the contract to host the Bulldogs next season, as it’s a pretty standard restriction when it comes to transfers, but Wojo has apparently not done that.

It’s refreshing to see a college basketball coach act like an adult when it comes to players opting to leave his program. If Wojo believes that he’s there to help his players become the best versions of themselves, then it makes perfect sense that he doesn’t see any reason to limit their potential destinations if the players determine that what’s best for them is to continue their collegiate career somewhere else.

I have to admit, it would be kind of fun to hear Mike Jakubowski announce “And now, please welcome back to the Al McGuire Court, Duane Wilson!” on the Bradley Center public address system in November or December. If it happens, it happens. If not, I hope Duane Wilson is happy wherever he lands.