Damarius Owens Indicates He’ll Return To Marquette Men’s Basketball
· Yahoo Sports
It seemed like things were pretty solid on Nigel James, Adrien Stevens, and Royce Parham returning to Marquette men’s basketball for the 2026-27 season coming out of the Big East tournament. James made it very directly clear about his position on the topic after being named Big East Freshman of the Year, while Adrien Stevens was also pretty clear about where he and Parham stood after MU’s loss to Xavier in New York.
That was a while back though, and we hadn’t seen any other declarations of intent from anyone else on the roster since. That’s kind of notable, since head coach Shaka Smart had already made it clear that he intends to “evolve” the roster for next season, and the math of Marquette’s scholarship situation is such that there are going to be guys leaving.
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As of Monday, it would appear that Damarius Owens will not be one of them, at least according to the Instagram video that he posted. That appears to be official team video edited together complete with the caption “Nowhere I’d rather be” and it’s co-posted with the official MU team account, too.
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Owens has not had an immediately obvious impact in his two seasons and 60 games with the Golden Eagles. He averaged just 2.6 points and 1.2 rebounds in 9.5 minutes per game as a freshman after spending the entire campaign plagued by a toe injury and a groin injury, the latter of which ended up needing offseason surgery. That may have set him back a little bit over the summer and into the preseason, and through Marquette’s loss at Purdue on December 13th this past season, Owens was sitting at just 2.6 points and 1.2 rebounds in 8.7 minutes a game, and those averages aren’t affected by his DNP in the Chicago game against Oklahoma or missing the Wisconsin game due to illness.
However, once whatever was going on with Zaide Lowery played itself out and Marquette suddenly found themselves with wing minutes to fill, Owens bloomed. Over Marquette’s final 21 games, Owens averaged 5.7 points and 3.1 rebounds in 18.7 minutes per night and even got his first career start when MU visited Georgetown because Royce Parham was a late scratch with back spasms.
It’s not all perfect — Owens shot just 27% from behind the three-point line both against Big East foes and for the season — and there were ups and downs to his performances as the season went along. However, if you’re looking at a 12-20 season and saying “hey, what do we have here that will work to any degree next season,” then giving Owens a little bit more runway to try to get a good healthy season on the board is a pretty solid decision.
Of course, he did wrap up the season wearing a facemask after a collision against St. John’s on February 18th, so hopefully there’s nothing there that needs surgery, too.
By the way: I didn’t do a full blog post for them, but we should probably note that Adrien Stevens and Royce Parham did post their own “I’m back” videos as well. Felt like they were pretty locked in already, but it’s nice to see that they did post those announcements.
Let’s drop in the roster chart so everyone’s on the same page as we get closer to the transfer portal opening in April.
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