Marquette Men's Basketball 2015-16 Non-Conference Games #12 & #13: Presbyterian & Stetson

I'm out of things to say.

This is the fourth time this week that I've had to write about Marquette adding teams in the bottom 50 of the 2014-15 KenPom rankings to the schedule for the upcoming season, and I no longer have anything interesting to say.  I mean, we're in a place now where IUPUI counts as a shining jewel of the non-conference schedule because they qualify as part of the better half of the schedule.  That's really not great.

We'll be back tomorrow with a post comparing this schedule to the past few years of lineups, and I'm expecting it to be an unmitigated disaster.  If that's the case, then it's time to investigate how Mike Krzyzewski schedules at Duke and see if Steve Wojciechowski is just doing what his old boss does.

Sunday, December 27 - vs Presbyterian

2014-15 Record: 10-22
Returning Points Leader: DeSean Murray, 15.7 ppg
Returning Rebounds Leader: DeSean Murray, 8.2 rpg
Returning Assists Leader: Davon Bell, 2.9 apg
Final 2014-15 KenPom Ranking: #321

Wednesday, January 27 - vs Stetson

2014-15 Record: 9-22
Returning Points Leader: Divine Myles, 11.1 ppg
Returning Rebounds Leader: Brian Pegg, 5.4 rpg
Returning Assists Leader: Angel Rivera, 3.9 apg
Final 2014-15 KenPom Ranking: #336

Those already ugly records carried by the Blue Hose and Hatters from last year are actually worse than you realize.  Presbyterian played four non-Division 1 opponents last season, while Stetson has three of those contests.  All seven of those games ended up as wins for them, so that knocks their combined record down to a less than exciting 12-44 against Division 1 opponents.  In fact, MU's known 11 opponents (we don't know for sure which teams we'll see in the Legends Classic) went 120-219 against Division 1 teams last year.  Belmont, Iowa, and Wisconsin account for 80 of those 120 wins.

There are two things I feel I should point out to you.  First, the Presbyterian game comes on the same day as a Green Bay Packers game against Arizona.  That Packers game is scheduled as a 3:30pm Central time start, so hopefully we get a noon start for Marquette and the approved timeout reform can get everyone out the door by 2pm so attendance isn't hurt by people staying home for football.  The other thing is the timing of the Stetson game.  You'll notice that this game is not taking place in December.  It's going to come in a gap in the Big East schedule.  On the upside, that's one fewer "hey, only one game this week" stretches once Big East games start.  On the downside, Stetson's not very good at basketball.

This will be the third time that Marquette has played Presbyterian, and the first since December 27, 2009, when the Golden Eagles came away with a 102-62 win.  The other game came one year earlier, and that was a 84-45 win for the home team.  As for Stetson, Marquette has something of a long history with the Hatters.  They first played in February of 1979 (an 86-78 MU win), and then played every single year through the 1987-88 season.  Stetson won the second game back in 1980, but it's been all MU since then for a current series advantage of 8-1.