On Monday afternoon, Marquette basketball received the shocking news that Joey and Sam Hauser would be transferring from Marquette University. The brothers are two of the key cogs to the Golden Eagles team, and they play a major role in making Marquette tick. To say this is a big loss for the Golden Eagles might be underselling it to the highest degree. This is a catastrophic loss for the team and the program. It is an indictment on Steve Wojciechowski first and others are way behind him. Consider this, the Hauser brothers are passing up a potential Top 10 team with Final Four hopes to play one more year for Sam and two more for Joey. For each player to leave, things must have been extremely bad for the both of them at Marquette.

This puts Wojo directly on the hot seat. The season was already one where people saw it as a ‘make or break’ year, but now with two of your best players deciding to leave the team, it says more about the administration than anything else. He did not do enough to keep these guys happy, and that is infuriating. Drama swirled around this team down the stretch that frustration had set in with some members of the team and Markus Howard, and Wojciechowski did not face conflict head on. We talk all the time about ‘Shadow gangsters’ in sports aka guys who act tough but are not at all. Wojo is the definition of a fake tough guy. The act he pulls with the media is all a facade as he is chicken shit when it comes to being a leader of men.

Marquette needs to think long and hard about the future of their program. This is an embarrassment at the local and national level of college basketball. NCAA outlawed the block rule meaning the Hausers could sign with Wisconsin. While I do not think that’s their plan, Badgers have already expressed interest in both players. Marquette has egg on their face, and that egg has been there since February. No one stepped in and fix things. Instead, the team gets pounded with more eggs. Golden Eagles could make a fucking omelet at this point. How can any kid want to come here when players don’t even want to stay when things are supposedly good?

Is Markus Howard part of the problem? I think partly, but I do not think it is his fault. Howard and Sam Hauser used to have a very close friendship. They were best friends early on in their career and think that friendship did not stay tight through the years. Try to find an Instagram post where Howard and Hauser are together. There is not one from this season. Who knows whether Joey being in the mix changed the dynamic or these two had a falling out yet it seems they aren’t as tight as they were in the past. The Hausers choosing to leave the next business day after Howard announces his return is dubious at best. It appears they do not want play with him. If I’m Howard, this is an eye-opening moment and should make him realize that things are not all about him.

It appears that Virginia is the favorite to land the Hausers. There is a real Stevens Point connection with the Bennett family which could land them both there. Michigan State and Wisconsin are both in the mix as well. They’re the top transfers on the market which causes me to chug bleach. Hopefully, things will be better in Fall, but I cannot say that with a straight face.

Charlie.