Marquette Releases Schedule For Italy Trip

On Tuesday, while in a Twitter conversation about a number of things including the only time I walked out of a Marquette game, I found myself on the GoMarquette.com schedule page for men's basketball.  What did I find there?  Surprisingly, and without warning, I found Marquette's four opponents for the trip to Italy in August.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Matt Velazquez gets paid to dig deeper on these kinds of things, and he managed to acquire the following information on the trip:

• The games will be streamed live and free on YouTube through a partnership with Basketball Travelers.
• These streams won't just be someone on MU's traveling crew with a camera in the stands.  We're going to get pregame shows, an assortment of in game graphics, and even post game interviews.
• The crews calling the games will be based out of Europe, but Deputy Athletic Director Mike Broeker will be joining each broadcast as a color analyst.
• While they won't be equipped for instant replay, the games will be archived on YouTube.  If you're not able to sneak a peek at work on the two Wednesdays or are otherwise occupied on the weekend, you'll be able to go back and watch later on.
• We already knew that Marquette was going to get 10 days of NCAA approved, in-season style practice time leading into the trip, which is arguably the most important part of the whole deal.  What we didn't know is that these practices will start this coming Monday, July 27.  Also, as a result of the practice schedule that's been arranged, Marquette's players will not be participating in the 2015 Milwaukee Pro-Am.  For those of you that got something valuable out of watching Junior Cadougan score 72 points in a game back in 2012 or Duane Wilson scoring 47 points a game last year, that must be a real bummer for you.

Some careful Googling doesn't turn up much information about the teams that Marquette is going to be playing, but I can figure this much out: Haukar went 13-9 and finished third in their Dominos League in Iceland last year; Jake Thomas played for Massagno last year and they were, um, not good; and as far as I can tell, Atletas was relegated after the 2013-14 season.  Where were they relegated to?  I have no idea.  I can't come up with anything on Vicenza, other than they likely exist.

Marquette has issued an official press release for the trip, which includes the full itinerary for the trip.