Greg Elliott Will Redshirt For The 2018-19 Season

Well, y’all can stop trying to figure out what is or is not going on based on what you see in videos that Marquette Golden Eagles men’s basketball puts up on Instagram. After Tuesday night’s 92-66 romp against North Dakota, Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski announced that Greg Elliott will redshirt for the remainder of the 2018-19 season.

Elliott suffered a torn ligament in his thumb back in October, and at the time, was slated to miss at least 8 to 12 weeks for recovery. We already passed the eight week mark, and the 12 week mark was coming up on January 2nd. With Marquette playing their 11th game of the season on Tuesday night, leaving them just 20 regular season games to go, that put the coaching staff and the medical staff at the point where the halfway point of the season was rapidly approaching. If Elliott wasn’t going to be able to play soon, then it would start to be kind of silly to ask him to burn a year of eligibility for less than half of MU’s games. Of course, to a certain extent, all of these decisions have to be made by Elliott and his family, so it’s nice to see that he’s making the long term decision for his college hoops career.

Elliott averaged 4.5 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.4 assists in 18.3 minutes per game as a freshman last season, all while essentially playing one-handed because of the injury that he suffered on the same hand that he re-injured in October and the brace he wore as a result. He was something of a pleasant surprise for Golden Eagles fans, as he came into the year as the least regarded prospect of the three freshmen that played last year and, in fact, was the fourth of the four recruits to commit to Marquette. He ended up finishing in the top 300 players in the country in terms of Offensive Rating, Block Rate, and Steal Rate on KenPom.com, and finished #400 in the country exactly in two-point shooting percentage.

During the preseason, Elliott figured to have a chance to make a serious impact on the rotation with the departure of Andrew Rowsey. However, after 11 games of action, it seems that Steve Wojciechowski is starting to settle into a rotation that he’s comfortable with, or at least one that he’s willing to work with in order to not put Elliott in a position of finishing his rehab and playing less than 15 games this season.

With Elliott expected to not play for the rest of the year, here’s what Marquette’s scholarship situation now looks like going forward.

Yes, this year’s column is a mess between Elliott and Koby McEwen both sitting out. It is what it is. As you can see, this doesn’t really change anything for Marquette for the next two seasons, but it does fill up one scholarship in 2021-22. With that said, there’s eight scholarship spots to be figured out between now and then, so it’s not like there’s anything that needs to be worried about at the moment. MU still has one spot open to go alongside Dexter Akanno next fall, but that won’t be taken up by a mid-year transfer, as the Golden Eagles do not have a spot currently open.

Best wishes to Greg Elliott as he finishes up his rehab on his hand, and we look forward to seeing him 100% healthy on the floor in November 2019.