CBS Sports Ranked Every Damn Basketball Team In Division 1

It's just so big......

As part of their 2015-16 college basketball season preview, the staff over at CBS Sports ranked every single Division 1 team, from #1 to #351.  It's totally bonkers, but somehow they did it.

So, first things first, right?  Where did Marquette end up?  At #63.

Henry Ellenson is the star incoming recruit, but this team is going to get improved performance from Duane Wilson and Jajuan Johnson. Still: very, very young group.

Kind of surprised to see Jajuan Johnson get the mention there over Luke Fischer, especially in light of the Big East coaches including Fischer on enough all-conference ballots to get him Honorable Mention status heading into the season.  Anyway, all of this is completely accurate and to get through all 351 teams, you have to keep it brief, so that's good enough for me.  #63 does have Marquette firmly outside the NCAA tournament, though, in the eyes of the CBS guys, as the final 20 spots or so in the 68 team field are all automatic bid teams.

Now that we've dealt with where MU is at, what about their opponents this season?  Let's start with the non-conference opponents.

No one should be very surprised by the rankings for most of MU's non-conference slate.  We've talked about it in terms of last year's final KenPom.com rankings, but this is a more subjective look at the teams as we enter the current season.  Here's the dirty secret about that lousy average and median: I included both Arizona State and North Carolina State on that list, and Marquette is only going to play one of them.  So if you put together a look at only the teams that Marquette is going to play this season, the average and median will actually be worse because you'd be removing either the #32 team or the #88 team.

Regardless of how good the quality is amongst MU's top opponents, it's a bad schedule when the MEDIAN point on the graph falls within 60 spots of the worst team in the country.

And then the conference opponents:

As was the case in the coaches' preseason vote, there is a cliff in quality in the Big East after Marquette.  Honestly, the cliff starts a little earlier, as Xavier and Providence are closer to the other teams than they are to Marquette.  Still, having all of the Big East in the top 130 teams in the country is a pretty nice achievement.