Retired Numbers Vs. Retired Jerseys

It was great news to see Kameron Jones confirm his commitment to Marquette shortly after Shaka Smart was hired as the new men's basketball head coach.

 

While having Tennessee's Division 2A Mr. Basketball in the fold shows that players are excited to be playing for Shaka when they originally committed to play for former head coach Steve Wojciechowski, something struck me as odd in Kam's announcement.

He is wearing a Marquette uniform with number three on it! You know Dwyane Wade's number. The one that currently hangs in the Fiserv Forum rafters.

  Photo courtesy of my first ever trip to FiServ Forum

I could not help wondering would Marquette actually let him wear number three? 

I was soon surprised to get my answer from Marquette Deputy Athletic Director Mike Broeker and Jones himself.

 

So, it turns out No. 3 will never be worn again. 

It got me thinking is Wade's number officially retired then? I thought Marquette retired jerseys and not numbers. 

That was the position going back to 2006 (and again in 2015 with Haanif Cheatem) when Lazar Hayward started his freshman campaign wearing No. 24. Problem with that number was it hung in the Bradley Center rafters in honor of the great George Thompson. The controversy was legendary head coach Al McGuire told Thompson at the time No. 24 was retired and Thompson was taken aback suddenly to find out it was not true. 

I remember having an off the record conversation at the time with a Marquette Athletic Department official who explained why it was jersey retirement and not number retirement. The simple explanation was citing North Carolina's policy on retiring jerseys because if they retired numbers, UNC would run out of numbers. The analogy makes sense, even though UNC does have eight retired numbers, since the NCAA has a rule banning numbers starting or ending with six through nine and any number over 55 (If you want to know why, it is all explained here).

Broeker’s tweet and the two attempts to issue 24 only to be changed still makes it feel like some numbers are retired. So is it retired numbers or jerseys?

The official Marquette stance on retired jerseys vs. numbers according to Senior Associate Athletic Director Scott Kuykendall is Marquette retires jerseys. Although he told me during our email exchange that conversations will be had before issuing any of the retired jerseys (Page 47 when you click on the link) numbers to a future player (I would assume that is one of the reasons no one is ever wearing three again).

Now that Marquette is playing in the Fiserv Forum, will there be more jersey going into the rafters? Can Marquette even put any more jersey banners in the rafters or does the lease with the Fiserv Forum limit how many banners Marquette can have?

The answer according to Kuykendall is there is no limit on how many jerseys Marquette can hang in the rafters. If it got tight up in the space alloted, the university can always adjust the banner size. 

He also added that the program does have some jerseys on its radar it would like to add to the rafters. He was unable to disclose though what the criteria is to be considered for jersey retirement as it is university classified internal document. For those who have never worked in document classification or in the corporate world, it is a nice way of saying we have standards and it is written down but it is not for public knowledge. Hey, Marquette is a private institution so that can do what they want I guess.

I am left thinking then what other jerseys should retired? Also what numbers should have a hard no always when future conversations might take place? Well, I will tackle this in a series throughout the off-season. 

If you got some players you feel should have a banner with its number hanging at Fiserv, feel free to tweet me your suggestions and safe for work reasons why to @toddjdub

Monday Links Update

Hey there folks. Just a few updates getting started off the week (and catching up from previous weeks).

Rosiak says, "I'm baaaaaack" from a three week vacation. Right out of the gate, he has delivered some coverage of a recent open gym at the Al McGuire Center. If you want a glimpse of how players are looking, the post is great. Of course, there is still the issue that neither Cadougan nor Mbao are with the program yet as they continue to work through Clearinghouse issues. Might we end up missing Acker more than thought?

Marquette finally released their full non-conference schedule. It is chock full of woofers, with some particularly terrible ratings for opponents like UM Eastern Shore (#341), Grambling (#342), South Dakota (were they even D1 last year?), and North Florida (#335). However, that seems just fine to me. After all, the schedule still includes the Old Spice Classic, as well as games against NC State and UW@Madison. Not to mention that next year's team will be very, very young, so it doesn't necessarily hurt to have some easier games for the team. If the schedule is like this in two years, that's an issue, but does anyone really think it won't get tougher as the team gets better?

That said, I still think it was a silly decision to release the games one by one. After all, if Marquette wanted to drive traffic to their site, they could have just highlighted these two outstanding interviews.

• First is a Q&A with David Cubillan. Cubillan comes across as yet another classy representative for Marquette, especially considering that he had been speculated as a potential transfer.
• Next up is a Q&A with Lazar Hayward that even has a video clip segment. It's really worth checking out.
  

Don't have season tickets yet? Or are you looking for tickets for a few games but are holding out? Consider the $99 season ticket package that is evidently selling like hotcakes. Evidently according to the MU Facebook posts, "We're now up to 832 season tickets sold in the new $99 price level... 167 more to reach our goal of 999."

In the final update for today, Dwyane Wade has moved from Converse to Nike's Jumpman brand. This will have an impact on the uniforms that Marquette wears next year. Marquette moves from being the only school sponsored by Converse to one of a handful of Jumpman schools.

Untucked, a guest essay from Steve Rushin

Most of you know Steve Rushin for his inspired work at Sports Illustrated where his "Air and Space" column was required reading for nearly 20 years. One of his most memorable SI columns was his take on the Warriors' run to the 2003 Final Four.

Steve remains a prolific writer and dedicated Marquette hoops fan. As the team enters the home stretch of the season Steve was gracious enough to author a personal reflection on the basketball program for Cracked Sidewalks, a gem we'll call "Untucked." Steve, thanks very much.
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UNTUCKED

As Catholic school kids in the 1970s, my buddy Mike and I passed the time in class sketching basketball uniforms to replace the ones our 7th-grade team was forced to wear – the ones with "B.V.M." sewn across the front, the monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Mike's dad had gone to Marquette and the dream jerseys we drew up were always some variation on the Warriors': Untucked and untuckable, the way we wanted to wear our uniforms – school and basketball uniforms – at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Though mine was a hockey family, I was influenced by those '77 Warriors in ways I wouldn't realize until later. Al McGuire seemed to have, even for that era, an extraordinary number of buttons on his vest and suit jacket. And then there was that poster from '77, of all those Warriors in pastel prom tuxes spilling out of a Packard convertible. To a 10-year-old, those tuxes said, "You've arrived." Precisely where you had arrived dressed like that – eleven men piling out of a single clown car – was a question I hadn't yet entertained.

In 1983, when my Dad was driving home from 3M headquarters in St. Paul, he heard on Sid Hartman's radio show that a local high school sports star – Tom Copa of Coon Rapids, Minnesota – had signed a letter of intent to play basketball at Marquette.

"You should apply to Marquette," my Dad said. I thought of basketball warm-up pants and tuxedo ruffles and nine-button suits, and I instantly agreed with him. I had never been to Milwaukee.

Only then did I begin to follow Marquette basketball. From this remove, a quarter-century later, those days are a blur of hairdos. In 1984, when I arrived on campus – not in a Packard convertible, alas, but in the back of my Dad's Buick Regal – Marquette basketball was in transition. The magnificent jheri curls of Terry Reason were yielding to the eventual flat-top of Tom Copa.

There's a famous episode of "The Simpsons" in which Grandpa Abe is watching Super Bowl III: The flowing locks of Joe Namath are about to vanquish the buzz-cut of Johnny Unitas, both in the game and in the culture at large.

"Johnny Unitas," says Grandpa Abe, middle-aged and out of touch. "Now there's a haircut you can set your watch to."

Twenty-five years ago, Marquette basketball was going precisely the opposite way – the bohemian, Samsonian locks of Reason making way for the regimental 'dos of Copa & Co. Players tucked in their jerseys. Rick Majerus, of all people, wore a blazer and tie. The MU sports information department couldn't find room in its budget for luxury automobiles or large-scale tuxedo rentals. And the Warriors suffered for these sins.

It was no coincidence that Notre Dame beat us eight times in four years, led by a point guard – David Rivers – whose listed six feet of height included a full four inches of 'fro. Style matters.

And so to me, it wasn't Dwyane Wade or Tom Crean who ultimately signaled the return of Marquette basketball. To me, it was the introduction of the powder blue uniforms that said Marquette had arrived again. Arrived in a metaphorical Packard, wearing a lime-green tuxedo.

My daughter was three last spring when I bought her one of those jerseys. It remains way too big, so she wears it like a dress.

Which is to say, untucked.

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Steve Rushin graduated from Marquette University in 1988 and promptly joined the staff of Sports Illustrated, where he was a writer for 19 years. Among his many accolades, Rushin was named the National Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association in 2006. Rushin also delivered the commencement address at Marquette University in 2007. For more information please visit SteveRushin.com.

Cool new MU jerseys revealed

Oh baby (blue).

The new MU jerseys are now up on the Spirit Shop website - - retro rules, back to the future.

It'll be great to see MU take the court in these classics.