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From President Robert Wild, S.J.
Could a Marquette basketball season have provided our fans with more to talk about? By the time this column appears in Marquette Magazine, we will know how our 2008-09 season ended. But from the vantage point of this moment as I think about the season so far I just marvel at the ride the men’s and women’s teams have provided for our fans. We’ve cheered the players, chastened the refs, talked back to our televisions and generally sweated out the action week after week. Both teams have pulled off big wins against tough opponents. Our women’s team had a historic win against Notre Dame, the first time in the program’s very proud history that the women beat a top-10 ranked team, and senior guard Krystal Ellis set an all-time scoring record for our teams — men’s and women’s alike. The men’s basketball team advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament, playing extraordinarily well with an altered starting lineup due to the loss of guard Dominic James, who was injured during the Big East tournament. And then we received word that Dominic would put on his uniform and play as he was able to in the Marquette vs. Missouri game. It is difficult to imagine a basketball season with more drama. We Marquette fans, myself included, love this stuff.
I hear often from our alumni, friends and students about the excitement that basketball brings to our campus and to the Milwaukee community. With good reason Marquette fans take great pride in the storied history of the program. Wherever I go in my travels as president I come across alumni who want to reminisce about some of the great past players they have known or about standout seasons and coaches, including, of course, the 1977 NCAA Champion team coached by Al McGuire and the years when Dwyane Wade wore the Blue & Gold. And this season has given us something new to add to our basketball scrapbook.
Days after his injury, in an interview, Dominic explained to our fans that his disappointment with being injured was tempered by his faith that “God has something better in store for me in the future” and that the best thing about Marquette “has nothing to do with how long the ball is bouncing. It has to do with how long your heart is going to beat. As long as my heart is beating, I know I’m going to be taken care of when it comes to Marquette.” In that moment, Dominic chose to put things in perspective, drawing upon his personal experience with the concrete values we seek to instill here at the university. In my mind this was cause to celebrate the fact that the core values we integrate so intentionally into our academics and residence hall communities also are being channeled just as intentionally into the lives and practices of the 210 student-athletes competing in the university’s name. This says a great deal about who we are as a university community and the values we seek to nurture in our students whether they are vying for a scholarship, an athletic victory or a job.
When Marquette joined the Big East Conference in 2005, most of our alumni were pleased to see the university finally competing on a bigger stage against top-flight athletic programs. There were those among us who feared we might have bitten off more than we could chew, that a school the size of Marquette probably belonged in a smaller conference. Well, thanks to the alumni and friends who loyally support our student-athletes’ best efforts, Marquette has proven beyond all argument that the basketball program started in 1917 is now more than able to compete with the very best.
For those who sometimes fear our basketball tradition threatens to crowd out the more essential character of this university, that we invest too much in the program, celebrate our victories too enthusiastically, mourn our losses too deeply, I think Dominic’s reflection on his experience as a Marquette athlete sums up our best hopes. Although the university community certainly loves the competition that unfolds before us in the games our teams play, in the final analysis we also want what takes place on the basketball court to demonstrate how a Marquette education has helped these student-athletes to find deeper meaning and purpose in their lives. Whatever the outcome, this present season has on many fronts added further luster to our Marquette basketball tradition. Go Marquette!
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