Markus Howard is, yet again, perhaps the best player in college basketball. The senior guard is averaging 27.4 points per game and shooting 39.4 percent from three-point range for No. 18 Marquette (17-6), which has won six of its last seven games.
“Markus is one for the ages,” Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski said on The Zach Gelb Show. “What he’s done over the course of his career, but especially the last two years, is right up in the history books with some of the great players that have ever played in college basketball. For me, I’m not surprised necessarily with anything that he does. I just don’t want people to become numb to it. It’s almost like a 30-point game by Markus Howard is treated like something he’s supposed to do as opposed to an incredible accomplishment.”
Howard has ten 30-point games this season. He has three 40-point games and dropped 51 on USC in November.
“Sometimes I think people can take for granted how good he is,” Wojciechowski said. “Certainly that’s not the case with me or my staff or the people surrounding the program. But nationally, there’s been times where my assistants have told me people come out with National Player of the Year lists and All-American lists and Markus may not be on some of them. That’s just ludicrous. That’s negligent.
“I know that sounds like me beating the drum of my own guy,” Wojciechowski continued. “But what he’s done – the Big East conference is as good, in my opinion, [or] better than any conference in the country in terms of the quality and depth of quality of teams. He’s averaging darn near 30 points a game in a league where coaches know who he is and game plan religiously to take him out of the game – and he’s still producing at a record rate."