After more than a week of practice, and just under a month before the season-opener on Nov. 3 against Albany, we got our first look at what Marquette men’s basketball might look like this season.

There are still questions for the Golden Eagles, mainly surrounding how they’re going to replace graduates Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell and David Joplin, but the new-look roster was on display Saturday in the annual Blue & Gold scrimmage at the Al McGuire Center.

“I thought it was a good, competitive setting,” Marquette head coach Shaka Smart said. “Any time you have half of your team going against the other half, there’s a fatigue level that sets in.

“That definitely occurred today. I told the guys afterward a lot of those plays were tired against tired. But those are good reps for us.”

Here are three takeaways from the scrimmage:

First-years Nigel James Jr. and Adrien Stevens show potential

Team Blue was comprised of veterans Zaide Lowery and Ben Gold, along with returning sophomore Caedin Hamilton.

But it was the first-years, Nigel James Jr. and Adrien Stevens, who pushed their team to a 70-52 win.

Stevens, who also stood out in the program’s open practice in July, continued to display his versatility by starting the scrimmage with a steal-and-score dunk before nailing threes from each corner.

Adrien Stevens with a steal and dunk #MUBB pic.twitter.com/9eV6WPoVuY

— Josh Lepak (@joshlepak) October 4, 2025

James Jr. was the person to really impress.

“He’s just got great energy,” Smart said. “He brings the juice, as we like to say.”

He was the first Golden Eagle to nail a 3-pointer, catching and draining one from the right corner without hesitation. He was also able to consistently get down low, his speed, athleticism and crafty finishing making up for his 6-foot frame.

Nigel James is gonna be so good #MUBB pic.twitter.com/0ZWsIjBjLS

— Josh Lepak (@joshlepak) October 4, 2025

And, if that wasn’t enough, he also showed a gritty defense with active hands and strong mobility. Coming into the scrimmage, James Jr. had the most deflections on the team with 43, 14 more than second place Tre Norman.

“He has a really high motor,” Lowery said of James. “His ability to make passes, his ability to score, play defense.

“Get deflections, as we see on the board he has 43 deflections in a week-and-a-half, two weeks of practice. That’s what we need from him, guys like that, to come in the game and be able to get us deflections, get us stops like that.”

Speed is the name of the game

It almost looks like two different Marquette teams.

One, a free-flowing, shot-making, dunk-slamming team playing like their Golden Eagles mascot suggests. The other, a sluggish, stuck-in-the-mud opposite playing like they’re only the Eagles — minus the Golden.

One saw an alley-oop dunk from Damarius Owens off a Chase Ross pass; Stevens’ aforementioned steal-and-score; open threes from an amalgam of players. The other saw a lot more muck-ups and a lot more bricks, maybe enough to rebuild the building in which they were playing.

One is Marquette when it gets out in transition with speed and quickness. The other is when Marquette gets into half-court basketball and starts running not the floor, but plays.

If Saturday showed one thing, even with uber quick point guard Sean Jones sitting out with a minor shoulder ailment, the Golden Eagles’ biggest advantage is their pace — something they’re going to have to press.

“Our pace is going to be a big advantage for us this year,” Lowery said. “I’m excited to see how it is for other teams and if they’ll be able to guard it.”

And maybe their biggest weakness is what happens when they don’t have that pace — something they’re going to have to work to fix both before and once the season starts.

“We talk about our most important advantages a lot as a team, and one of them is playing with great speed and pace,” Smart said. “And [James Jr. and Jones], along with Chase Ross, have been the primary engines of that, and they’ve done a good job.

“There’ll be times where we may even play them together, but we want to get that ball up the floor as fast as we can. We’re going to get the ball in the paint as fast as we can.”

But what about when they get into half-court basketball and have to run actions?

“Most of the possessions are going to be in the half-court,” Smart said. “Although we want to be stubborn about seeing how many we can get in transition.

“We’ve got a lot of things we do in the half-court, too. We want to get to multiple actions. We want to get the ball in the hands of guys on the floor, after having the defense have to guard several different actions, where they can attack closeouts.”

Caedin Hamilton shows his aggression

Smart has talked before about the fact Marquette was over-reliant on Kam Jones to score last year, with Joplin being second-in-command. Now that both are gone, points are going to come on the scoreboard in a different way.

On Saturday, there were signs of who could be the ones to step up. Hamilton was one of those people.

The slimmed-down, muscled-up 6-foot-9 big man started the scrimmage with a won jump ball over 7-foot-1 Josh Clark before drawing a foul on the first-year center in the opening possession.

“His mind-set’s come a long way,” fellow big man Gold said. “He steps on the court and his mind-set is no one can mess with him on the court.

“You saw that’s how he tried to play today. He’s aggressive. He’s always the one setting the tone in the physical battle. That’s what we need from him. He’s able to get those catches in the paint, and we can play through that and that’s going to be a big thing for us this year.”

Caedin Hamilton #MUBB pic.twitter.com/X4hVgY5isc

— Josh Lepak (@joshlepak) October 4, 2025

Then he showed off his ball-handling, facilitating and hook-shot ability — inching closer to the 10,000 hooks Smart challenged him to make before the season-opener.

“Caedin’s been so bought in with his approach towards growth,” Smart said. “First and foremost as a person.

“I think he realized coming in here that the belief in himself, the resiliency, the ability to handle hard things, that stuff had to be addressed and improved before we can talk about making jump hooks or getting rebounds.”

This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.