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And honestly, I was right.
DePaul has been installed as the preseason favorite to win the women's basketball league. The Blue Demons picked up eight of the available nine first place votes, as head coach Doug Bruno was unable to vote for his team. Bruno's vote and the other unaccounted for vote went to Creighton, the team that I had picked as my prediction for the preseason favorite. You're here for Marquette news, and the Golden Eagles finished fifth in the balloting, earning 55 points, finishing just one point behind Villanova. Here's the full list:
1. DePaul
2. Creighton
3. St. John's
4. Villanova
5. Marquette
6. Georgetown
7. Butler
8. Providence
9. Xavier
10. Seton Hall
The four squads coming off NCAA tournament appearances in 2013 are the top four teams, even though St. John's lost two oustanding seniors. Marquette is one of two 2013 WNIT teams in the league, so I suppose that makes sense for fifth place. I don't really know how Georgetown slots above Butler, the other WNIT team, but there you have it. There's a big drop off in the accumulated points between Marquette (55) and Georgetown (36), so it seems that third, fourth, and fifth place were jumbled a bit in the various ballots, but there's a clear dividing line between the top and bottom half of the league.
As I mentioned, I had DePaul and Creighton flipped in my predictions. I had Marquette and Butler pegged to improve on last year in the next two spots, followed by Villanova. The coaches have elected to disagree with me and I saw that one coming. It was hard to get a read on the teams that are carrying over from last year with Notre Dame not losing at all, Connecticut only losing to Notre Dame, and Syracuse only losing to Notre Dame and UConn. That's a lot of losses for the rest of the league, and most of them were bad losses. The one thing that I would predict for this year is that scoring averages will be way up by the end of the season.