Sandy Cohen leaves Marquette basketball team
Marquette junior forward Sandy Cohen III has left the men’s basketball program, head coach Steve Wojciechowski announced Sunday night.
Cohen of Seymour, Wis., played in 66 games for the Golden Eagles, averaging 4.6 points and 2.3 rebounds. He appeared in three of Marquette's four games this season, going scoreless in 19 total minutes of action.
“First and foremost, obviously we wish Sandy the very best," Wojciechowski told the Journal Sentinel on Sunday night. "What I think happened was Sandy felt like he wasn’t going to have a significant role on our team after 40 practices and four games and he wants to play somewhere that he’s going to have a significant role. Can’t blame him for that."
Cohen was the lone player who committed to Marquette during Buzz Williams' final season as head coach who remained with the Golden Eagles after Wojciechowski took over the job in the spring of 2014.
During his freshman season, Cohen appeared in 31 games and started seven, including the season opener. He averaged 3.8 points in 15 minutes per game while shooting 33.3% from beyond the three-point arc and seemed primed for a jump during his sophomore season.
At the start of the 2015-'16 campaign it seemed like Cohen had made that jump. During non-conference play, he established himself as a consistent scoring threat, averaging 9.5 points per game through the first 12 contests. Additionally, he served as the team's best and most dependable wing defender, playing an especially pivotal defensive role in Marquette's victory at Wisconsin.
When Big East play hit, though, Cohen started to struggle. His play at both ends dropped off and he lost his spot in the starting lineup. On Feb. 24, he didn't appear at all in Marquette's game at Creighton because of an unspecified suspension.
Wojciechowski had a hard time putting words to Cohen's struggles last February, but by the end of the season, while sitting in the locker room at Madison Square Garden following Marquette's loss to Xavier in the Big East tournament on March 10, Cohen had a clear understanding of what he hoped for the 2016-'17 season.
“Obviously I’ll be an upperclassman, probably more of a leadership role," Cohen said. "Just more of a consistent player on the team. I know I had a lot of ups and downs this year and started out kind of hot and kind of slowly went down, so just more of a consistent, backbone player — tough defense, makes the right play, makes the good play, makes the easy play and when I’m on the court you just know what kind of player I’m going to be and the things I’m going to do.”
This season, though, hasn't gone like that. Cohen has been at the bottom of the depth chart, playing the fewest minutes (19) of the 11 scholarship players on the team. His role has diminished while playing behind senior Jajuan Johnson, graduate transfer Katin Reinhardt, sophomore Haanif Cheatham and freshman Sam Hauser, all of whom are like Cohen in that they are wings who can play multiple positions.
Johnson, Reinhardt and Cheatham were all expected to be starters and are all averaging more than 22 minutes per game. Hauser has been Marquette's biggest contributor off the bench, logging the fifth-most minutes on the team at 20.8 per game.
Cohen played five minutes in Marquette's 24-point win over Vanderbilt, 11 minutes in a 32-point rout of Howard and three minutes in the Golden Eagles' 18-point loss to Michigan on Thursday in the 2K Classic. On Friday night, Cohen didn't play in Marquette's 78-75 loss to Pittsburgh.
“I talk to our guys all the time about what I anticipate their role being on our team," Wojciechowski said Sunday night. "We didn’t specifically talk about (Cohen) transferring, but we talked about where he was in the rotation and I think he wants to play more.”
While Cohen's future plans are not fully known, he would have to sit out a year if he were to transfer to another Division I school to continue his basketball career. Also, in the eyes of the NCAA, he would have used up three years of his eligibility because he appeared in games in three seasons at Marquette.
Thus, if he were to transfer to a Division I school and did so after this semester, he would be able to use the last of his eligibility next spring after sitting out a year. Because the NCAA allows players five years to play four, he also could opt to sit out all of this season and next before using his final year of eligibility to play the entire 2018-'19 season.