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player ready...When Michigan State assistant Tom Crean took over as head coach at Marquette last year, he left behind brilliant guards Mateen Cleaves and Charlie Bell and inherited a backcourt of Chicagoland natives Brian Wardle and Cordell Henry.
Wardle and Henry, who oppose DePaul at Allstate Arena on Saturday, may fall short of Cleaves, leader of the Spartans’ 2000 NCAA champions, and Bell, leader of this season’s unbeaten No. 1-ranked team. But there are similarities.
For one thing, all of them–Cleaves and Bell from Flint, Mich., Wardle from Hinsdale Central and Henry from Young in Chicago–were proven winners before they entered college.
Cleaves led Flint Northern to two Michigan state titles. Hinsdale Central had a record of 55-7 during Wardle’s junior and senior seasons and made the Elite Eight both years. Young went 61-3 in Henry’s last two seasons and won the Class AA state title in 1998.
“Cordell and I are used to success,” said Wardle, a senior and Marquette’s leading scorer with a 17.4-point average. “I hate to lose. My only joy comes from winning. You can tell the difference between people who are used to winning and those who are not.”
“Brian and I have played together on the same traveling teams since we were in eighth grade,” said Henry, a junior and Marquette’s No. 2 scorer at 10.4 points per game. “We have a lot of memories. We’re used to one another and used to winning.”
Another similarity between the program Crean left and the one he took over in Milwaukee is that both stress recruiting in their own back yards.
Marquette has a third Chicago-area starter, 6-foot-7-inch freshman Odartey Blankson from Hillcrest. He and freshman guard Dwayne Wade from Richards, who is ineligible this season, were teammates on the successful Illinois Warriors age-group AAU team that Wardle and Henry played on as teenagers.
Two Marquette players, 6-11 Greg Clausen from Dixon and 6-7 Jon Harris from Edwardsville, live in Downstate Illinois. Four, including 6-10 starter John Mueller, are Wisconsin residents.
“At Michigan State, all of our players lived within a 4 1/2-hour radius of East Lansing,” Crean said. “This promotes a family feeling. It’s the way we’d like to recruit at Marquette, though we might occasionally get a player from New York or-California.”
Or Scandinavia. Marquette’s other starting forward Saturday will be Oluoma Nnamaka, its rebounding leader (5.8 per game) from Uppsala, Sweden.
Chicago players have starred for Marquette for decades. Prominent among them were: Bo Ellis from Parker, Bob Lackey from Evanston, Doc Rivers from Proviso East, Lloyd Walton from Mt. Carmel, Jerome Whitehead from Waukegan and Marcus Washington from Lyons Township.
Blankson could add his name to this list, if he scores as well against DePaul as his sister Candis did for DePaul against the Marquette women last weekend. Candis scored 32 points as the Blue Demons beat Marquette by five points.
Speaking of brother-sister acts, Wardle’s older sister Amy scouted out Milwaukee for her brother. She played four years at UW-Milwaukee.
Wardle shot .360 from three-point range and .816 from the foul line as Marquette split its first 10 games, which included an overtime loss to Minnesota and a one-point defeat at Dayton.
“Brian really wants to get better,” Crean said. “He had his best game at Dayton. He shot extremely well and played fine defense against Tony Stanley. Cordell Henry also is playing much better defense.”
Missouri Valley update: Illinois State junior Shedrick Ford was named MVC player of the week. He averaged 18.5 points and six rebounds as the Redbirds (8-1) beat Georgia Southern and Western Illinois to stretch their winning streak to seven games.
Illinois State’s Tarise Bryson played 41 minutes in the 87-83 overtime victory at Western Illinois. It was the seventh time in his career Bryson played more than 40 minutes in a game.
Top scorers on opposing teams are having trouble in Bradley’s Carver Arena. In five games, visitors’ leading scorers–averaging 17.4 points per game coming in–have averaged 4.2 points while hitting 6 of 49 shots, 12.2 percent. Credit the defense of guard Jerome Robinson for much of this.
Last year’s MVC Sixth Man of the Year, Joshua Cross of Southern Illinois, has comfortably made the move to starter. He’s averaging 13.8 points and a team-leading 6.8 rebounds per game