Yesterday, in his free time, Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel managed to break a little bit of news for the future of Marquette basketball.
#mubb will play in the Legends Classic in Brooklyn next year, 2K Classic at Madison Square Garden in 2016 & Maui in 2017, per @muathletics.
— Matt Velazquez (@Matt_Velazquez) November 29, 2014
The Legends Classic is the event that Villanova participated in and won this year, picking up wins against VCU and Michigan. In addition to the two games in the Barclays Center, the event also gives each team two games at home. To give you an idea of the possible opponents for MU next year, the Wildcats were paired off with Bucknell and Maryland-Eastern Shore. According to the Wikipedia page for the event, Arizona State will also be participating in 2014, meaning it's possible that MU will face the Sun Devils for a third consecutive season.
The 2K Classic was won by Texas this year. It's the same format as the Legends Classic, and is actually run by The Gazelle Group as well. The event is done to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, so I heartily support Marquette's participation in this tournament. The last Big East team to participate in the event was Villanova back in 2012, so it's nice to see the conference get back into the thick of things.
I believe we're all familiar with the EA Sports Maui Invitational, and I'm not going to torture you by embedding the video of Rotnei Clarke's buzzer beater from 2012. Marquette picked up a home game against Colgate that year, and I imagine that there will be a game of some sort again in 2017. Arizona won this year's event and since we already know that Connecticut will be int he 2016 version of the event, we don't have to worry about running into a Kemba-esque buzzsaw.
So what do you think? Personally, I'm excited, because this gives me another three years to keep saving up for when Marquette gets to play in the Battle 4 Atlantis.