Tyler Kolek is the dime-dropping, road crowd-enraging sparkplug of Marquette's surprising season

Tyler Kolek always had the vision.

The Marquette guard knew he could play at the highest level of college basketball, he just needed the opportunity. There was never a doubt in his mind that he could be one of the driving forces for a top 25 team.

But like one of Kolek's bounce passes that find their target through heavy traffic, the 6-foot-3 guard has caught everyone else by surprise. 

One of the nation's leaders in assists at 6.4 per game, Kolek is gaining converts with every MU victory while enraging opponent fan bases who can't comprehend why the left-hander who looks like a student manager is carving up their team's defense.

The 22nd-ranked Golden Eagles (15-6, 7-3 Big East) are one of the hottest teams in the country, ripping off seven straight wins. Kolek, a Rhode Island native, has another opportunity to turn heads when he returns to his home state for a highly anticipated battle with No. 17 Providence (17-2, 7-1) at 11:30 a.m. Sunday. 

Kolek was once a kid in the stands at the Dunkin' Donuts Center. In order to get on the court there as a player with the Golden Eagles, everything had to come together like a perfectly executed pick and roll.

Setting up the play

Kolek has been immersed in hoops for as long as he can remember. His father, Kevin, was a 2,000-point scorer at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth). When Kevin visits Milwaukee, Kolek signs his dad into MU's recreation center so he can play in pickup battles with students.

“I would always be at his men’s leagues games," Kolek said. "He’d always drag me to Providence games or just like we’d play two-on-two, three-on-three with all of his buddies.”

Former George Mason coach Dave Paulsen heard about Kolek from Middlesex Magic AAU coach Mike Crotty, who was Paulsen's point guard on a NCAA Division III title-winning team at Williams College. Once Paulsen, a Wausau native, laid eyes on the guard, Kolek became the school's top recruiting priority.

"What I was impressed with was his ability to pass and his ability to rebound at his position," Paulsen said. "Those are undervalued. People, when they evaluate players, they look at scoring. They look at athleticism. They look at that stuff.

"Just his ability to rebound and then start the break and his ability to make the difficult pass. But what I liked, he was always able to make the simple pass as well.”

Kolek averaged 10.8 points, 3.6 rebounds and 2.3 assists last season for the Patriots, earning freshman of the year in the Atlantic 10. He was known mostly as a shooter, knocking down 53 of 148 three-pointers.

"Tyler started the year as my point guard," Paulsen said. "But we needed him to score so much and we needed him to play so much that we ended up starting a point guard along with him. We started two point guards because we needed somebody to take the pressure off him because people were hounding him 94 feet and we needed him to score."

Paulsen was fired after George Mason finished 13-9. Kolek entered the NCAA transfer portal.

Shaka Smart had seen enough on Kolek's tape to want the guard for what the coach was building at MU.

Making the right reads

Smart's offense is heavy on pick-and-roll action. According to Synergy Sports numbers provided by MU blog Paint Touches, Smart's team at Texas last season ran pick and rolls on 909 possessions, the most among high-major teams.

Smart bet that Kolek would fit right in.

"We didn’t know he’d be quite this good in pick and roll," Smart said. "Quite this good passing the ball, period. What we did know is he’s very high character. He’s got an incredible work ethic. He wants to win in the worst way. And we also knew he made a lot of shots last year. Which, ironically, he’s not shot it as well as he did. But a lot of that is he’s just in a lot different role.”

Kolek was sold on the opportunity.

"They gave me the ultimate confidence," he said. "They said they wanted me in the ball screen and they were expecting to run plays for me off the ball as well. Like catch and shoot and stuff like that. But my shot hasn’t fallen and other guys have been getting it going. I’m loving the role that I’m in now. Just helping other guys get shots. It’s fun."

Kolek basically enrolled in a graduate-level seminar in pick-and-roll offense under the professorship of Smart's staff, which includes special assistant and offensive guru Nevada Smith.

"We actually watch all my ball-screens after most of the games," Kolek said. "Like (Smart) always says win at the point of attack, which is right when you come off the screen. How he uses the screen, because that’s the point of where the play is made, right at the screen. So once you come off that. We’re looking at all that stuff. We’re looking to see if I did make the right reads, make the right pass. So kind of correct it from there."

The pick and roll is a quick-developing chess match between offense and defense.

“Basically it comes down to, can you get two guys on the ball?" Smart said. "I.E. your guy and the big man who is in the coverage. And then, if you can do that, reading the secondary defender so you can find out which teammate is open. Tyler’s really good at that.

"Now what teams have started to do is they’ve started to say we’re not putting two guys on the ball. So now they either make it two-on-two, where you see some of those plays where he keeps it, he keeps it, he keeps it and the last second he gives it to the big. Or they're just flat out making it one-on-one where they’re saying, hey, you might get a step on the ball screen but we’re going to make you finish and we’re going to fight to recover and we’re not going to help off anybody."

Kolek and Smith have developed a close relationship. The pair are always the first on court to go through a pregame routine that anticipates ball-screen reads. There's also intensive video study with assistant coach DeAndre Haynes before games.

"Even before that, right before we go on the court, we’re watching the other team’s defensive clips," Kolek said. "Seeing where they are and their spots on defense. Where the help defenders go. That’s really how I feel I’ve stepped it up a little."

Executing the right play

Kolek knows he will be even more effective once his own shots start falling. Kolek is shooting 30.1% overall and 24.1% on threes. Per Synergy Sports via Paint Touches, MU is at 0.398 points per possession when Kolek is the shooter out of a pick and roll, in the 7th percentile in the nation. The Golden Eagles are at 1.128 per possession when he is the passer, in the the 77th percentile. 

"That’s one area where I got to get better at," Kolek said. "Kind of think score first and pass second. Whereas like some of these other games I’ve thought pass first and had some layups maybe. Like (against Xavier) when I had a turnover and tried to dump it off to Kur (Kuath). I had a right-handed layup. Just trying like I did in the second half, just coming out aggressive and then that will open everything up for everyone else because they have to guard me and then everybody else will be open."

Like the Golden Eagles, Kolek has gotten better as the season has progressed.

"The exciting thing is he used 110 ball screens all of last year," Smart said. "This year, he’s already moving toward 300 for the year. And these are ones where there’s a result (a shot by MU or a turnover). That doesn’t count if there wasn’t a result. 

"But the point being, if you think about the best players in the world at using the pick and roll, those guys have used tens of thousands of ball screens in their careers. Chris Paul. LeBron (James). The best guys at creating. James Harden. So Tyler’s really just getting started learning. He’s getting better and better, but at the same time Big East defenses are also adjusting. So he’s got to make adjustments to their adjustments.”

Kolek's passing has been contagious and MU's offense is humming. The Golden Eagles rank second in the nation with 65.8% of their field goals coming off assists.

Kolek has all kinds of dimes in his bag: the wrap-around drop-off to a center, the heater to the shooter across the court, the classic chest pass.

“I’m not the fastest guy," Kolek said. "I’m not the most athletic. I’m not really that big. So I got to find angles to get it where it needs to go. Sometimes that calls for a one-footed hook pass across the court or a one-handed bounce pass. They don’t teach a lot of that stuff. They don’t want you to do a lot of that stuff. Like jumping to pass, I do that pretty often. But Coach doesn’t say anything because my assists-to-turnovers is 3-to-1 in conference play."

That touches on another important element to Kolek's success.

"I say this with great admiration, he’s a cocky little (expletive)," Paulsen said. "He’s really cocky. He plays with a swagger. He’s got the vision. He’s also got the guts to make those daring plays. Sometimes when he played for me last year, because it was a little newer, he’d throw those balls away more than he is now. Sometimes I’d have to tell him, just hit singles. Stop trying to hit a home run every time you’re at bat."

Not surprisingly, Kolek has drawn the ire of crowds on the road. The guard leans into that, like singing along to "Country Roads" after MU beat West Virginia at the Charleston Classic.

"I definitely feed off that," Kolek said. "I don’t know why but every away team that we’ve been to has kind of picked a fight with me. Every time I touched the ball at Villanova they booed me. Just me. I didn’t do nothing to them. After the game, there was a clip of me blowing a kiss to the crowd. So I just like doing little stuff like that. It kind of gets me going and gets the fans into it, too. I know Marquette people like that stuff."

That includes his coach.

“He’s got a real chip on his shoulder and I think that’s a definite positive for him and our team," Smart said. "We’re Marquette. We’re not Kentucky. We’re not Kansas. We’re not Duke. We want to be a team that has something to prove at all times. And he’s a player that has something to prove. So it fits well with who we want to be.”

Contact Ben Steele at (414) 224-2676 or bmsteele@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenSteeleMJS or Instagram at @bensteele_mjs