The lesser regarded of the Golden Eagles’ two active freshmen turned into arguably MU’s best bench player.
With the 2024-25 season long since in the books, let’s take a few moments to look back at the performance of each member of YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles this year. While we’re at it, we’ll also take a look back at our player previews and see how our preseason prognostications stack up with how things actually played out. We’ll run through the roster in order of total minutes played going from lowest to highest, and today we’ll move along to the best freshman contributor on the team this past year……..
Royce Parham
Freshman — #13 — Forward — 6’8” — 230 lbs. — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
WHAT WE SAID:
Reasonable Expectations
At 6’8”, Parham does have a certain advantage to getting on the court this year. Marquette does have a lot of guards and wings on the roster, and more importantly, a lot of experienced guys there. When it comes to the 4 and the 5, we’re looking at David Joplin at one position and Ben Gold at the other…… and that’s about it. Between the two spots, there’s at least 20 minutes that need to be filled one way or another. Someone has to do it, and it’s going to have to be a guy who hasn’t played at all for Marquette before doing it, or at least someone who’s never played notable minutes. (Looking at you, Al Amadou.) If Parham is capable of defending the way that Shaka Smart and his staff need a big guy to defend, then that’s going to get him on the floor. It’s probably not going to be in a starring role, but hey: Freshman year, etc.
If you want to put some actual numbers on it, BartTorvik.com’s projections are on the low end of things. 2.3 points, maybe a rebound, just 6.4 minutes per game. Exceeding that will be a clear success of a season, that’s for sure. I think Parham’s going to be called on to play a role, but Role Player is definitely a reasonable spot to set expectations.
Why You Should Get Excited
Scroll back up for a second, and please note that Marquette lists Royce Parham at 6’8” and 230 pounds. I don’t know exactly when they did those measurements, but here’s what I do know:
247 Sports: 6’8”, 200
On3: 6’9”, 200
Rivals: 6’8”, 205
ESPN: 6’8”, 210
That’s interesting, isn’t it? Obviously, the recruiting ranking company listings are well behind things, they could be as much as a year old at this point. But I find it intriguing it seems that Parham’s first summer with strength and conditioning coach Todd Smith may have resulted in something of a major physical development for him. What if that means that Parham is more ready for Big East/Division 1 basketball than the recruiting services were giving him credit for? What if he’s actually slightly underrated as a prospect as a result? Remember: He beat out the more highly regarded Owens as team and tournament MVP last season when they were teammates. Parham’s clearly a heck of a basketball player, and what if his newfound physical acumen just accentuates that?
12 points, three rebounds, 5-for-9 from the field, 1-for-3 from long range in the open scrimmage, by the way. He can hang with his teammates, at the very least, and Parham was actually leading the team — which included Kam Jones, by the way — in scoring through three quarters. I’ll be shocked if Parham ever plays 29 minutes in a game all season long as he did in the scrimmage, but he can clearly do a thing or two.
Potential Pitfalls
There’s the standard issue freshman problem of course. If the game just isn’t coming to him, if he’s not catching up to the speed and physicality fast enough, that’s going to limit Parham’s playing time. It’s probably not going to be great for Marquette if Parham can’t at least carve out a tiny role for himself on this roster, given the general depth in the front court, but Shaka Smart has to assemble wins out of parts that work for him.
That’s the other part of it: Parham has to be able to defend. This isn’t a secret. Shaka Smart’s saying it out in public, not specifically about Parham, but about his whole team. Without Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro around to make the offense hum, this year’s roster has to be able to grind out stops on the defensive end to generate value on the offensive end. If you’re going to play for the Golden Eagles in 2024-25, you have to create a positive impact on the defensive end. If Parham can’t do that, it’s going to be a long season of figuring things out for him.
At a glance, Royce Parham’s freshman season certainly looks like an unqualified success. We said there was an obvious runway to playing time for him, and he grabbed up at least 10 minutes of action in 28 of Marquette’s 34 games. That’s pretty good for a freshman, and averaging nearly 15 is even better. Parham easily sailed past the Torvik projections for his season, and since he more than doubled the minutes projection, it makes sense that he basically doubled up what the algorithm said we might be able to expect from him.
I’m sure you’re looking at that 28% from behind the three-point line and saying “hey, wait, let’s not say unqualified success here.” Fair point! That’s bad, even from the perspective of “hey, if the big is a reasonable threat, that stretches the floor.” I do want to point out two things about that. The first is that if we dump out the eight straight misses to start the season against Stony Brook and George Mason, Parham jumps up to 30.6%…. which still isn’t super great, but that’s at least in the neighborhood of “the big is a threat.” The other thing is that in a 21 game stretch from the Big East opener against Butler through the Big East tournament game against Xavier, Parham did knock down 34.7% of his three-pointers. Once he settled in to playing Big Time Division 1 Basketball, Parham was a perfectly reliable shooter, and that’s pretty good. If that’s an indication of what he can be as a guy going forward, I like what that means for the Golden Eagles.
I also like that 8.0% offensive rebounding rate from this past season. That’s the best number on the roster amongst guys who were in the rotation every night, and if he had the minutes to qualify, that would have been a top 450 in the country type of performance. In MU’s 20 game Big East slate, Parham’s offensive rebounding rate went up to 9.8%, which tells us that he might have been gaining confidence in his ability to go get second chances as the season went along. It’s not a secret that offensive rebounding has been a weakness for Marquette under the direction of head coach Shaka Smart, and this past year — #180 in the country per KenPom.com — was MU’s best performance in that department since Smart took over. It seems clear that Parham’s talents had something to do with that bump upwards towards “fine” and away from ”hey, this is kind of awful, actually.”
On the topic of “gaining confidence of his abilities,” I have to point out that the BartTorvik.com filters help us put some numbers on what I kind of felt I was seeing from Parham as the season went along. After the start of Big East play, Parham had an offensive rating of 115.9 and his block rate was a little bit north of where it was overall this season, too. That block rate for the whole season would have been in the national rankings if he had the minutes to qualify, and if he was getting better as the season went along, that’s fantastic.
The last thing that we have to talk about is the thing we brought up in the Pitfalls department. The fact of the matter is that Hoop Explorer tells us that Parham was a detriment to Marquette’s defense while on the floor against top 150 opponents. 101.0 points per 100 possessions on the floor, 94.9 per 100 trips off the floor. Not much changes if we filter it to just since the start of Big East play, so we can’t keep that “hey, he’s figuring it out!” trend line going here.
There is good news there, though. While the defensive shift with Parham on the floor is noticeable, there’s basically no change on the offensive end. Sure, you would like to not give up 101 points per 100 possessions, but if you’re scoring 119 on the other end at the same time…… well, it’s not the worst thing in the world, right? If you filter it down to just since Big East play started, Marquette was actually just a shade better on offense with Parham on the floor, too. If you can get a freshman to the point where they can be neutral on one end of the court and not a devastating letdown on the other end, that seems like a positive place to be.
BEST GAME
Man, it certainly would have been fun if Marquette could have won the Iowa State game. Parham had a breakout performance in that one, going for 17 points on 7-for-12 shooting including knocking down 3 of his 7 long range attempts. He aded four rebounds and a block in his 23 minutes of action, too. There’s arguments for home against Villanova (10 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist in a 13 point win) and the Big East tournament against Xavier (10 points, 2 rebounds, a block in a two point win), but that Iowa State game was too solid to ignore.
SEASON GRADE
Royce Parham played more minutes than we were probably expecting, he seemed to be getting better as the season went along (and stats bear that out a bit), and since we only have starters to review after this, you can make the case that he was Marquette’s best and most consistent bench option all year long. Heck, there’s an argument to be made that he market corrected Al Amadou right into a redshirt season and possibly entirely off the roster, depending on how you want to look at it.
There’s parts of his year that are kind of ugly, but most freshmen are going to have something like that on their docket. I think I have to come down as almost entirely positive here, so I’m going to give Parham an 8 as a grade.