Marshall has been recruiting athletic players over BBIQ players ever since he got to WSU. I'm going to guess that his theory is that BBIQ can be taught to the right players, but you can't teach athleticism to those who have little.
Marshall has hit a stretch recently where he seems to be getting athletic guys with some BBIQ. He's had some huge misses by recruiting some great athletes who could never handle D1 ball.
A lot of MVC teams recruit great BBIQ guys who aren't that athletic. The athletes gaining BBIQ tend to improve more over their D1 careers than the less athletic guys who have great BBIQ coming out of HS.
Marshall's rep for handling JuCo's is so good that he can basically cherry-pick any JuCo AA that he needs to fill a weakness. We've got a freakishly athletic 6'7" JuCo coming in next year.
A big weakness for WSU over the last 3 or 4 years was dribble penetration. Marshall is bringing in players who stop that at the rim. That gives the perimeter defenders for WSU a lot of freedom to cut off passing lanes and go for steals.