Former Lexington high school basketball star impresses for Missouri in loss to Kentucky
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Game day: No. 19 Kentucky 91, No. 15 Missouri 83
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Missouri in Columbia, Mo.
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Saturday’s SEC regular-season finale between No. 19 Kentucky and No. 15 Missouri offered UK fans plenty of encouraging signs as the Wildcats enter postseason play.
Mark Pope’s team went to Columbia and dealt Missouri only its second home loss of the season. UK’s 91-83 win also marked the Cats’ eighth victory this season over a team ranked in the top 15 of the AP poll.
But Saturday’s contest also likely had quite a few people in the commonwealth rooting for one of the Tigers.
Missouri is the final college basketball stop for fifth-year guard Marques Warrick, a former star player at Lexington’s Henry Clay High School and a former four-year starter at Northern Kentucky.
Warrick had 17 points and two steals for the Tigers and made four 3-pointers in Saturday’s game against UK. All of Warrick’s scoring came in the second half as Missouri unsuccessfully tried to overturn a nine-point halftime deficit.
During his accomplished high school career at Henry Clay, Warrick finished as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,909 career points. Warrick was the 11th Region’s player of the year in 2020 and a finalist for that year’s Kentucky Mr. Basketball award, which went to Collins High School’s Dayvion McKnight.
After moving up to the college level, Warrick continued his scoring tear at Northern Kentucky. Warrick scored 2,246 points across four seasons with the Norse, which also makes him the all-time leading scorer in NKU men’s basketball history.
Warrick — a four-time All-Horizon League honoree at Northern Kentucky — also made a trip to the 2023 NCAA Tournament with NKU after the Norse won that year’s Horizon League Tournament. As a 16 seed, Northern Kentucky pushed 1 seed Houston all the way in a 63-52 Houston win in the round of 64. Warrick had nine points in that contest.
As a senior during the 2023-24 season at Northern Kentucky, Warrick averaged a career-best 19.9 points per game while playing a career-high 36.2 minutes.
But after four seasons at the mid-major level, Warrick elected to transfer to Missouri last April.
Warrick’s move up to high-major college basketball has come at the expense of playing time.
After starting 121 games during his time at Northern Kentucky, Warrick has come off the bench in all 30 games that he’s played this season. And after averaging at least 31 minutes per game during each of his four seasons with the Norse, Warrick is averaging only 13.7 minutes this season with the Tigers.
For the season, Warrick is averaging 6.9 points per contest while shooting a blistering 45.3% on 3-pointers.
Warrick’s 17-point effort against the Wildcats tied for his second-best scoring output of the season. Warrick had 19 points in Missouri’s SEC opener on Jan. 4, an 84-68 loss at Auburn. He also had 17 points in a home nonconference blowout of Lindenwood in November.
But the obvious trade-off for Warrick with a decrease in playing time has been the team success that Missouri has enjoyed this season.
Even with Saturday’s home loss to Kentucky, the Tigers are having a special season. Kentucky and Missouri finished the regular season with identical records of 21-10 overall and 10-8 in SEC games. The Tigers have six wins in Quad 1 games this season as well.
Not bad for a team that went 0-19 against SEC opponents last season.
Missouri is an NCAA Tournament lock and was projected by ESPN on Saturday morning to be a 5 seed in March Madness.
This story was originally published March 8, 2025 at 5:00 PM.
