The 2026-27 college basketball season is right around the corner, so let's dive into the Marquette men's basketball roster and take a look at what to expect from each player this season. Going forward in these Player Previews, we'll be going in this order: The two freshmen going in alphabetical order by last name then doing the same for the three transfers, then moving on to the redshirt freshmen. After that, it's the seven players returning from last year's roster going in order of average minutes played per game last season.
We're going to organize our thoughts about the upcoming season as it relates to each player into categories, as we always do:
Reasonable Expectations
Why You Should Get Excited
Potential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we close out our look at the new freshmen on the roster…
Well, let's just get this out of the way. Yes, Ethan Johnston, just like Johnston Hall on campus, the home of the Diederich College of Communication. No, he is not a Comms major according to his team bio page, electing to study finance in the College of Business Administration instead.
Ethan Johnston committed to Marquette waaaaay back in May of 2025. He was the first of head coach Shaka Smart's two Class of 2026 prospects to make their pledge to join the Golden Eagles. Here's some quotes from Johnston as relayed by On3 at the time of his commitment:
"I chose Marquette because of not only their belief in me, but because of their three core values which is relationships, growth, and victory. They demonstrated those to me on a daily basis."
What led to his trust in the coaching staff?
"They established a connection with me and my family early on. Whether they were giving me tidbits on how I can improve or watching me play. I felt the love from the whole coaching staff. It's like a real family. Witnessing that firsthand is what made it a no brainer decision for me and my family."
In his own words, what type of player is Marquette getting in Johnston?
"I am a big guard, I can do it all on offense and defense. I guard 3 positions, I can handle, shoot, and I love making my teammates better by getting them shots in the right spots."
He has a message for Marquette fans.
"I can guarantee y'all that I will give my heart and soul to the team and this fanbase. Y'all got a winner."
Here's what Marquette put in the Signing Day press release last November:
Johnston (6-7, 185) is a three-year letterwinner under head coach Seth Eilberg at The Hill School and was a unanimous First Team All-MAPL selection as both a sophomore and a junior. He averaged 15.0 points, 7.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game as a junior and helped the program to school-record 25 wins and a trip to conference and state tournament title games in 2024-25. He will conclude his career among the program's top-10 in scoring, rebounding and assists. He has competed on the EYBL AAU circuit for the New York Rens, helping the team to a first-place division finish last season.
And here's Shaka Smart's commentary at the time:
"Ethan combines terrific size and length with lateral and vertical athleticism, giving him major versatility on both ends of the floor," Smart said. "Additionally, his passing ability and propensity for taking on the toughest matchups make him extremely well-suited for our team."
At the time he committed, Johnston was ranked #118 in the Class of 2026 by 247 Sports' Composite system. Going into the 2026-27 season, he's at #221 in the 247 Composite , and I will note that he had already slipped out of the top 200 by the time we had reached Signing Day six months after Johnston committed. On3/Rivals has him at #180 in their Industry rankings, which is a mixture of all the available rankings, but they do not rank him internally. ESPN also does not rank Johnston although they only rank to their top 100 anyway, but the World Wide Leader does call him a four-star prospect just like 247 Sports does.
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As a guy who is clearly not regarded as a top 100 prospect or even really a top 150 prospect, we can reasonably project Johnston as more of a developmental prospect for Marquette. He definitely doesn't project as a starter on the 2026-27 team, so whatever playing time he does earn as a freshman, it's almost assuredly going to all be as a bench option for the Golden Eagles. Commentary from both Johnston and Smart seems to indicate that he has a bit of passing ability, so we can't rule out that he could earn minutes at point guard, a spot that MU definitely needs to find ways to give Nigel James a break.
At that point, it turns into a question of what Johnston's role is and whether or not he's ahead of anyone else that we're not quite sure about in terms of minutes this season. In addition to Johnston trying to find a spot behind the presumed 1-2-3 starting options of James, Adrien Stevens, and Nolan Minessale as we saw in the Canada games, there's also super-sub Damarius Owens filling in time there. After that, we have to figure out where fellow freshman Alex Egbuonu fits in, as well as redshirt freshmen Nash Walker and Ian Miletic. Michael Phillips fits in somewhere here, and we can't ignore Colin Porter completely, at least not until a court says he's definitely ineligible.
So there's a logjam of guys. Some have experience at least practicing with a Division 1 team last year. Some saw game time last year. Is it possible for Johnston to leapfrog into a recurring role, night in and night out, this season? Possible yes, but something that we should expect from him? Seems like a stretch for now.
In my eyes, Marquette has six players that we know we can trust to play a role in 2026-27. That's out of a roster of 15 guys. You really need seven or eight to make a real rotation that you can use. That means there's a doorway to a pretty significant role on this team for someone to jump through and contribute all year long.
Why can't that be Ethan Johnston?
I'm particularly intrigued by the discussion of his passing. Nigel James can not play 40 minutes every game. Someone has to be the playmaker for the 5-10 minutes a night he's on the bench. Nolan Minessale provides a certain amount of that ability, and Adrien Stevens had a double digit assist rate as a freshman last season, too. Both of them are guys that are probably starting with James though, so they don't quite count in terms of absorbing the minutes that James is on the bench.
With Colin Porter remaining in limbo for the time being, I'm curious if Johnston can be an option for a role at the 1. If he is, that opens up extra avenues to playing time for him, and once he starts earning minutes, it starts to get easier to keep earning more and more as the season goes along. We can't ignore the fact that Johnston averaged three assists a game in the three games in Canada . Only James and Minessale averaged more.
Here's the problem with that idea: Johnston also averaged 2.3 turnovers per game. A certain amount of sloppiness in those games is expected: Shaka Smart was intentionally messing around with lineups given the number of guys he has that aren't used to playing with each other. Some of that can just be attributed to a lack of familiarity and cohesion for now.
But at the end of the day, Johnston's a freshman, and not a particularly highly regarded freshman in the eyes of the recruiting ranking brain trusts. It may take him a minute or 17 to figure out exactly how to make things work for him on the court at the Division 1 level. That's fine, he doesn't need to be a star on this team, he can develop at his own pace for now.
It's just that he's as likely to spend a majority of the season on the bench as he is to average more than 10 minutes a game.
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