The 2025-26 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 four true freshmen expected to play this season going in alphabetical order by last name — skipping past Sheek Pearson who is projected to redshirt — then moving on to the redshirt freshman, then the redshirt junior who missed last year, and then going through the returning players in ascending order of total minutes played in 2024-25.
We’re going to organize our thoughts about the upcoming season as it relates to each player into categories, as we always do:
Reasonable ExpectationsWhy You Should Get ExcitedPotential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we check in a sophomore with an interesting place in the rotation going into the season……
Sophomore — #13 — Forward — 6’8” — 235 lbs. — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
When I wrote the review for Royce Parham’s first season in Milwaukee, my biggest takeaway was that if you parse his season apart, he was developing into a perfectly acceptable Big East player. He was a competent three-point shooter by the time we got to Big East play and a pretty great offensive rebounder against league foes, too. His efficiency overall was pretty darn great in Big East action, and he was quietly turning into a competent rim protector at least in terms of shot blocking.
It’s important to point this out again, because I suspect that a lot of people’s memories of Royce Parham last season are clouded by the fact that he missed his first eight three-point attempts of the season, going 0-for-4 against both Stony Brook and George Mason. That’s the kind of thing that has the possibility to tint everyone’s perception of you as a player, especially when they look back and see “shot 28% on three-pointers for the season.” You can see how you automatically make the jump to “boy, he really struggled all year, didn’t he?”
Except he didn’t! Parham was better than you would hope to see from a freshman coming in as a fringe top 100 prospect, and that’s before you take into account that he had just 13 turnovers in over 500 minutes of action. Low on mistakes all year long, high on growth and development…. that’s a nice combination.
The obvious question for 2025-26 when it comes to what to reasonably expect from Royce Parham is “how much growth and development is still in there?” I think everyone would like that answer to be “a lot,” and we can start with the BartTorvik.com algorithm in terms of thinking that might happen. Can I interest you in 11.1 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in nearly 28 minutes a game?
Before you get over the top with “woah, that’s a big jump from 5.1/2.2/0.4,” remember that we’re talking about nearly doubling his minutes, too. If you project that out to per-40 minute expectations, that’s going from 13.8 points last year to 16.1 points. 6.0 rebounds last year to 6.7. 1.0 assists to 1.7. It’s not that much more than he was doing, just being a little bit better — the best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores, right? — and getting a lot more minutes. If Parham has had the kind of offseason development in the weight room and in the gym that goes along with that kind of on-court/in-season development, then I think that’s not really that big of a jump for him.
Why You Should Get Excited
Perhaps the bigger question about Royce Parham isn’t so much how much has he developed himself as a player since March, but more about exactly what his role on this team is. Last year, he was a backup big, spelling Ben Gold at center an awful lot.
What if his role this season is David Joplin’s replacement in the starting lineup? What if Parham gets to play a little more inside/outside, what if he can turn into something of a matchup nightmare: Capable of moving on the perimeter to bother the hell out of you on offense, but ready to body your big man in the paint if need be? Creating second chances in the paint with that nearly 10% offensive rebounding rate that we saw in Big East play last year, but using his size and wingspan to cut off attacking and passing lanes from the three-point line?
Expecting him to be what Joplin was last season would be wrongheaded. But do you know what David Joplin did in his first season as a starter for Marquette? 10.8 points, 3.9 rebounds, 0.6 assists in just under 28 minutes a night. Uh, isn’t that what the algorithm projected for Parham, pretty much?
And, uh, the thing to remember? Jop did that on a team playing with three NBA draft picks. That’s what he did as a #4 option. I’m pretty sure this team needs Royce Parham to contribute, not just be useful in the background. What if, because the opportunity is there, Parham steps up and becomes a big ol’ star for the Golden Eagles? Someone has to be the leading scorer, right? Why not Royce?
“Royce Parham grabs a spot in the starting lineup” seems like a pretty likely outcome for where this season is going. However, when outlining the positive possibilities for guys like Caedin Hamilton and Joshua Clark to get on the floor, my mind turned to “what if those guys can take most of the minutes at center, freeing up Ben Gold to play a perhaps more natural position for him at the 4?”
If that potential possibilities comes through, then Parham’s not a starter on this team. I don’t think he can slide up to the 3 and play a lot on the wing, even though Marquette going 6’8”/6’11”/7’1” with Parham/Gold/Clark at times would be an imposing look. Give you 10 seconds of a possession to cause havoc on the wing? Yes. Chase around a third guard in an opposing lineup for 25 minutes a night? Feels unlikely, right?
So, if Hamilton and Clark give you 30 combined minutes at the 5, and Ben Gold gives you 25-30 between starting at the 4 and covering some of the remaining 10 minutes at the 5…. where does Royce Parham fit into this rotation? Maybe it’s a situation where head coach Shaka Smart and his staff elect to cover the 80 combined minutes from those two positions with these four guys somehow, and that’s how Parham fits? If that’s what it is, I don’t know if he’s going to get to 11/5/1 in 28 minutes, and then how we view his season comes down to exactly how successful the team mixture was in the win/loss columns.
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