You know what we forgot to do? Check in on the preseason Associated Press for women’s basketball.
Part of the slip is because Marquette is quite justifiably nowhere near the rankings to start the season. While the Golden Eagles are going to have to work quite a bit to punch into the national spotlight, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have opponents who aren’t already there.
For example! Marquette’s second game of the season will be against preseason #17 Minnesota! The Golden Gophers are coming to
the McGuire Center on the first Saturday of the regular season after the Golden Eagles took a 40+ point loss up in St. Paul last season. The only other non-conference contest with a ranked team, or even a team earning points in the preseason poll, will come when Marquette heads off to the Bahamas over Thanksgiving weekend. Their first game of the Baha Mar event will be against preseason #23 Illinois. We’ll see if the Illini are still in the rankings when we get to the end of November, but it seems likely. They have to get through a road trip to Ball State as their most dangerous contest before then, but it would appear that the biggest threat to Illinois’ rankings is someone else outside the top 25 stacking wins and jumping them.
As you can guess, the only Big East team in the preseason top 25 is UConn. The Huskies are starting the season at #2 in the rankings, but they did pick up six first place votes. If you’ve looked at their schedule for the first week of the season, then it is very clear that Connecticut could be #1 when the first in-season poll lands because 3-0 against that schedule will clearly be deserving. Villanova is the only Big East squad that earned votes in the poll. They’re down there with five points worth of votes in the Others Receiving Votes department.
Marquette gets Villanova at home in the third game of the Big East schedule, which is set for December 10th. The trip to Finneran Pavilion is scheduled for February 18th, and that’s the fourth-to-last game of the regular season. Marquette’s two games against UConn are less than a month apart. They’ll visit the Huskies in Hartford — is it a good sign that they want to play Marquette in the bigger but well off campus arena? — on Wednesday, January 13, but then host them on Sunday, February 7th, and that one will be at Fiserv Forum for what will be MU’s first ever intentionally scheduled game in the building.
The Golden Eagles start the season off on Tuesday night with a home game against Mississippi Valley State. Tipoff is set for 6:30pm Central, and the broadcast will be on ESPN+.
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