Andrew Rowsey Will Join Marquette’s Alumni Team In The Basketball Tournament

For those of you who have kept an eye on the Marquette alumni in The Basketball Tournament, you’re going to get a new but familiar face to watch this summer. On Wednesday, TBT announced that former MU guard (and brand new MU graduate) Andrew Rowsey will be putting on the blue and gold to try and win the $2 million winner-take-all prize.

I find it very funny that they mentioned Rowsey breaking Dwyane Wade’s single season scoring record in the tweet. I mean, do all the advertising you want there, that makes all the sense in the world. The fact of the matter is that Markus Howard promptly went out this past season and jumped up and down all over said single season scoring record.

In two seasons at Marquette after transferring in from UNC-Asheville, Rowsey averaged 16.2 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game. In 67 appearances for the Golden Eagles, Rowsey assembled shooting splits of 43.3% overall, 42.6% from three-point land, and 91.0% from the free throw stripe. He spent most of his junior season coming off the bench for head coach Steve Wojciechowski, but as a senior, Rowsey averaged 20.5 points, 3.0 rebounds, and 4.8 assists, which was a career high in points and assists for him. Rowsey’s shooting splits as a senior: 42%/41.5%/90.2%.

He also earned two reputations along the way. First, Rowsey was well known as a hilariously confident shooter, perhaps best explained through these three screenshots from the Creighton home game in his senior year. REMEMBER: These shots happened on consecutive Marquette possessions.

I believe it was after this game that we got the quote from Rowsey where sometimes he gets so locked in that he doesn’t realize how far away he is until the shot is in the air and it’s taking longer than normal for it to get to the rim.

Rowsey’s other reputation was for The Thing. I forget where we eventually ended up on Rowsey’s patented “pump fake the defender into the air then attempt a jumper to draw the foul and shoot free throws” counter in his senior year. I do, however, remember that Fox Sports ended up doing a graphics package on it during his senior year. I remember an announcer saying he had never seen it twice in a game........ when Rowsey had just done it three times against Villanova a week or so earlier. I remember Providence fans going ballistic during a game that their players kept falling for it in a single game. I remember that he ended up breaking Wade’s single season scoring record on #TheThing.

All I know is that Ken Pomeroy wrote an article at The Athletic about the heavy penalty on giving a shooter three free throws when getting fouled shooting a three-pointer, and the jump-off point for the article was how amazing Rowsey was at drawing those fouls.

How many times will Rowsey pull off #TheThing in TBT this summer? Will the Elam Ending encourage him to try and draw it in order to end the game on #TheThing? I have so many questions.

One question I don’t have is whether or not Marquette will be officially in TBT this summer. You need to have seven players on your roster by June 1st, and with the addition of Rowsey, Golden Eagles is past on the magic number of seven. We already knew that Maurice Acker, Dwight Buycks, and Jamil Wilson were on board. While checking to see who was all on the squad after Rowsey was announced, I found that Juan Anderson, Trend Blackledge, Cinmeon Bowers, and Jake Thomas are all signed up as well. That’s eight, and thus the MU alumni are all set to go. You don’t need to vote for the squad, but you can still register as a supporter and try to get yourself a share of the cash money prize if they end up winning the whole shebang.

As for what’s next, we wait until after June 1st. After that point, TBT’s brain trust will officially bracket up the tournament and let us know where and when Golden Eagles will be playing as well as who the first round opponent will be. If you go to the team page right now, it says that they’re in the Wichita Regional, but as we discussed in the past, that’s not officially locked in quite yet.