Yesterday we talked about why Marquette men’s basketball has such an interest in so many transferring guards. You should really go read it, although you’re probably not going to be particularly happy after you do.

Anyway, as a followup to that, we’ve got two new players that the Golden Eagles are interested in. Fascinatingly, both are 6’8” or taller, so it’s like the universe read what I wrote about guards and decided to give us some tall guys to talk about. Fun, huh?

Okay, let’s see what we have today.

Asbjorn Midtgaard

Asbjorn Midtgaard was listed as a 7’0”, 267 pound center on the Wichita State roster this past season. He has played for the Shockers in each of the past three seasons, and it appears that this will be a sit one/play one situation for Midtgaard. He had scattered appearances in 2017-18 and the first two months of 2018-19. Once AAC play started up, he started getting regular minutes for the rest of that year and the first two months of 2019-20. When league play rolled around this time, Midtgaard was relegated to an end of the bench role, never playing more than nine minutes and picking up six DNPs. In 66 appearances for Gregg Marshall, he’s averaging 9.4 minutes and contributing 2.7 points and 2.6 rebounds.

While incredibly limited in minutes overall, he’s shown a proclivity for rebounding on both ends of the court as well as shot blocking. The Danish big man has posted double digit rebounding rates on both ends of the floor in the past two seasons according to KenPom.com, and his block rates in those years were comparable to what Theo John did in 2019-20.

If you like big dudes of reasonable quality to come off the bench for one season for you, then you could do a lot worse than Midtgaard.

Trey Murphy III

I have checked Trey Murphy’s bio on the Rice athletics website. His father is listed as “Kenneth” so yes, Trey is merely a clever nickname.

The Owls listed Murphy as a 6’8”, 200 pound guard for the 2019-20 season. That fits right in with Steve Wojciechowski’s interest in all the lanky dudes, that’s for sure. The North Carolina native appeared in 61 games for Rice with 25 starts, 23 of which came this past year. In his career, he’s averaging 10.9 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 1.0 assists per game, although he had career averages of 13.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 1.2 assists while getting 30.2 minutes of run per game.

Of particular note is Murphy’s ability to knock down the outside shot. He’s shooting 39% in his collegiate career after attempting seven long range shots per game this past season. Yeah, that’s going to fit in around the Al McGuire Center. He’s not exclusively an outside shooter, although his shot attempts for the Owls were heavily tilted in that direction. He can finish inside the arc, connecting on 54% of his two-pointers in his career, and Murphy is a career 79% free throw shooter, too.

He has a sparkling turnover rate per KenPom.com in each of his two years of college hoops, but shooting a whole bunch of threes probably has a lot to do with that. Murphy has quality rebounding rates for a guard, so if that’s where he fits in at Marquette, then he should be able to contribute there pretty well.

It appears that Murphy will be a sit one/play two transfer, and I’d be lying to you if I thought it wouldn’t be fun to play four guys north of 6’7” at the same time in 2021-22.

That’s it for now, but I thought we should do some housekeeping on previous MU transfer options while we’re here.

• Sam Sessoms committed to Penn State.
• Mark Gasperini says that Marquette is one of five schools showing the most interest in him.
• Justin Turner has Marquette in his final six.
• Nate Johnson committed to Xavier.
• Trey Wertz is down to 11 schools, but Marquette is not one of them.
• Carlik Jones has Marquette in his final eight, which includes returning to Radford for his grad transfer season.
• Tyrese Martin said he has eight schools pursuing him the hardest, but Marquette is not one of them.
• Alan Griffin has trimmed his list to six, and Marquette is not on it.

Okay, let’s wrap up with the scholarship chart.

As mentioned earlier, it looks like both Midtgaard and Murphy would be sitting out the 2020-21 season if they ended up at Marquette. I’m not sure what the plan is at center in 2021-22, but I do know that Theo John will be gone by then, so adding Midtgaard as a gentleman of reasonable quality would be pretty helpful. Jamal Cain and Koby McEwen will also both be gone by the time Murphy would return to eligible playing status, so you can see how the gentleman from Rice would potentially slot into the picture.

Marquette has at least two scholarships sitting open right now for the 2020-21 school year as well as potentially a third if Tommy Gardiner returns to walk-on status. Between adding Midtgaard and Murphy to the list of potential new guys and the subtractions mentioned a moment ago, it looks like we have 15 irons in the fire for the Golden Eagles at this point of the calendar. Who knows where things are going to eventually end up, so keep your eyes and ears open.