Can he contribute as a sophomore?
The 2024-25 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 two true freshmen in alphabetical order by last name — skipping past Josh Clark who is not expected to play this season — then the redshirt freshman, then the returning players in ascending order of average minutes played last season.
We’re going to organize our thoughts about the upcoming season as it relates to each player into categories, as we always do:
- Reasonable Expectations
- Why You Should Get Excited
- Potential Pitfalls
With that out of the way, we move along to our first preview about a guy who actually played college basketball minutes for the Golden Eagles last season…….
Al Amadou
Sophomore — #21 — Forward — 6’9” — 210 lbs. — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Let’s start here with this. We didn’t expect anything from Amadou last season. Yeah, he was a top 170 prospect, but between his body type coming out of high school in Philly and Marquette’s big man situation with Oso Ighodaro, Ben Gold, and David Joplin, there just wasn’t going to be a lot of minutes for him. That’s fine! We got precisely 52 minutes of Amadou all season long, spread across 14 games, and most of those minutes were with Amadou as the only scholarship player on the floor with the walk-ons to mop up the end of blowouts.
It’s fine. Lots of freshmen at lots of places don’t contribute.
But now it’s sophomore year for Amadou, and it’s time to do something more than registering an Incomplete for a Player Review.
Reasonable Expectations
So what does that look like on this year’s edition of the Golden Eagles? The only thing that’s changed about where Amadou most likely fits in on the court is the departure of Oso Ighodaro to the Phoenix Suns. That is a notable change though, as Ighodaro played more than 32 minutes a game on average last season. Those minutes have to go to someone. They can’t all go to Ben Gold, even if we think that he’s the presumptive starting center on this team, because Gold was already playing nearly 17 minutes a night.
The door is open for Amadou to grab minutes somewhere here. Either that’s taking up Gold’s minutes behind David Joplin at the 4, or behind Gold at the 5. Is it going to be a lot of minutes, particularly with Caedin Hamilton vying for time at the exact same positions on the floor? Mmmm, probably not, but this is a one step at a time situation here.
For the record: The BartTorvki.com computer breakdown is not high on Amadou’s minutes this season. 8% of minutes works out to about 3.2 per game…. which is actually less on average than he played in 2023-24. Then again, 3.2 per game while playing in all 31 regular season games would be nearly 100 minutes of action, almost twice as much Amadou as we saw last year.
Why You Should Get Excited
Amadou might be best suited as a “get out there and run around” kind of a player. A fourth-line guy, to use a hockey metaphor. An energy guy, in other words. The thing that was most notable about Amadou as a freshman is how devoted he was to busting his ass while Marquette was up 15 or 20 and it was him and four walk-ons on the floor. Not a single part of those seconds on the court mattered to the outcome, but it mattered a great deal to Amadou that those guys got a chance to do some stuff and maybe score a bucket. Sprinting around, setting screens as physically as possible, battling for rebounds chasing after loose balls to give the walk-ons another bite of the apple, and so on and so forth.
Is that going to work when the game is actually on the line? I don’t know if it’s going to be as effective, but if Marquette wants to play with a Goon Mentality this season, well, what Amadou did last year fits perfectly. I’m not saying MU needs him to go rough someone up on the court, but sacrificing to make the team better and get one extra or extended possession here and there? That’s where Amadou can definitely get noticed by the Marquette faithful at Fiserv Forum.
By the way? Al Amadou went 1-for-2 on three-pointers in the Open Scrimmage. If that’s a thing he can do — not 50% necessarily, 35% regularly, 40% when he’s wide open — then that’s going to help his chances of playing.
Potential Pitfalls
I didn’t notice anything from Amadou in the Open Scrimmage. You can go read the box score. Yeah, five points, four rebounds, and a foul, played every minute. He’s out there all right….. and that’s about it. He was a guy that I was, to a certain extent, there to see and I don’t really remember noticing him. Last year was whatever in terms of how much he did or did not play. This season is where he should be stepping forward into some kind of a role…. and Amadou just did not stand out at all.
Maybe that’s just because Shaka Smart has imbued everyone with that Goon Mentality idea already, and even in what amounts to a publicity event, all of the guys in blue and gold are putting in the work. Maybe it’s just hard to stand out when everyone’s matching your effort level and trying to beat out everyone else’s effort level, too.
Or maybe Amadou’s going to struggle to find playing time this season. That’s not that surprising. Marquette has 12 scholarship players who will be active this season, and last year’s Notable Rotation Players list kind of petered out after eight. There are guys on this roster who are going to be just that this year: Just Guys. Maybe Amadou’s one of them. It might depend on what Smart and his staff see as his trajectory as a player.