{"id":709683,"date":"2026-04-13T13:57:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709683\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T13:57:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T13:57:55","slug":"2025-26-marquette-mens-basketball-player-review-8-josh-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/709683\/","title":{"rendered":"2025-26 Marquette Men\u2019s Basketball Player Review: #8 Josh Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reasonable Expectations<\/p>\n

Six minutes a game, 1.5 points, 1.2 rebounds.<\/p>\n

Yes, that is hyper-specific, thank you for asking. Why? Because those numbers are exactly what Caedin Hamilton did last year for Marquette. There\u2019s not much different between Hamilton and Clark, with both men as \u201cproject big men coming off a redshirt season to help them get ready to contribute.\u201d Sure, Clark has four inches on Hamilton, which does naturally help him out in terms of immediate impact, but expecting more than the last guy who was a project big for Shaka Smart probably isn\u2019t the best idea we\u2019ve ever had, y\u2019know?<\/p>\n

To continue the point: The BartTorvik.com algorithm<\/a> doesn\u2019t have Clark listed as one of the top 10 contributors on this year\u2019s team. We\u2019ll get into why I don\u2019t 100% buy that in a second, but we\u2019re talking about reasonable expectations here. After what we saw from Hamilton last year \u2014 and Keeyan Itejere back in 2022-23, if we\u2019re being honest \u2014 I don\u2019t think that we can expect a whole bunch from Clark this year. The year in Milwaukee is going to be beneficial for him, but probably not \u201cstarting big man\u201d beneficial.<\/p>\n

Why You Should Get Excited<\/p>\n

Someone has to start at center for Marquette.<\/p>\n

I landed on \u201cHe was fine at worst\u201d<\/a> relative to Ben Gold\u2019s adventures as Marquette\u2019s starting center last season. That doesn\u2019t stop me from thinking that he may be deployed best as the primary\/starting 4-man in the starting lineup and occasionally landing as the big man on the floor depending on fouls and lineup rotations.<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the case, then Marquette\u2019s attention for a starting center turns to either Caedin Hamilton or Joshua Clark. This is the part where I don\u2019t agree with BartTorvik.com leaving both of them out of the top 10 contributors. If Shaka Smart and his staff move Gold over to the 4 and tell Hamilton and Clark that \u201chey, you guys gotta figure out how to cover at least 30 of these minutes, have at it,\u201d then at least one of them is pretty much automatically a top 10 contributor.<\/p>\n

And why not Clark? He\u2019s the taller one which helps on both offense and defense, he\u2019s the one that lit up the McGuire Center with quickie dunks in last year\u2019s open practice. I\u2019m not talking about a massive overshooting of expectations here. Starting, playing 15 minutes, averaging five points and four rebounds, being a net positive defender? If Marquette can get that from Clark, I think that changes the trajectory of the season and bodes well for his development over the next several seasons, too.<\/p>\n

Potential Pitfalls<\/p>\n

Caedin Hamilton redshirted for a year and played 184 minutes last year, and just 91 after the start of Big East play.<\/p>\n

Keeyan Itejere redshirted for a year and played just 29 minutes and just nine minutes after Big East play started.<\/p>\n

There is a version of 2025-26 Marquette basketball where Shaka Smart and his staff see the best way forward with Ben Gold at center. If that\u2019s what\u2019s happening, then the big Kiwi is probably playing 25-30 minutes a night and the chances for playing time for Joshua Clark are disappearing into thin air after that.<\/p>\n

The question might be whether or not Smart & Co. decide this before the season starts. What if they think that Clark and Hamilton can hold it down in the post, and then we get to the end of the Dayton game six contests into the year and that\u2019s very much not the case? What if Clark\u2019s 10 extra pounds over the last year just aren\u2019t enough \u2014 I saw him in a sleeveless shirt at the Marquette\/Wisconsin volleyball game and he doesn\u2019t look that much bigger \u2014 to help him stand up to the physicality that he\u2019s going to see in the Big East, and it becomes very clear over the first month of the season? He\u2019s supposed to be a long term development project, so if that does happen, it\u2019s not a problem for Smart\u2019s roster building\u2026. it just might be a problem for the 2025-26 Golden Eagles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reasonable Expectations Six minutes a game, 1.5 points, 1.2 rebounds. Yes, that is hyper-specific, thank you for asking.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,56022,88634,9023,9024],"class_list":["post-709683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-marquette-player-profiles","tag-marquette-player-reviews","tag-marquette-basketball","tag-marquette-mens-basketball"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116397752481521489","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}