Rothstein: Marquette Basketball Will Play American University In 2017-18

We’re officially off into the section of the calendar when non-conference games for next season start leaking out this way and that. FanRag Sports’ Jon Rothstein tossed a tidbit in the direction of Marquette on Wednesday, reporting that the Golden Eagles will host American University as part of the 2017-18 schedule.

First things first: We’ll take this with a tiny grain of salt, as Rothstein reported last spring that Marquette was going to play Utah, but that report was fairly quickly refuted and that home-and-home series never materialized. With that said, this is going to be a buy game, not a home-and-home, so it is probably more likely to happen.

Second things second: This is a bad choice by Marquette. If Jeff Jones was still running the show in Washington, D.C., this would probably be okay. If it was early in the tenure of current AU head coach Mike Brennan, this would probably be okay. However, each of the past two seasons, American has finished sub-300 in KenPom, and the Eagles have been getting worse every year under Brennan.

In AU’s defense, they were incredibly dependent on freshmen and sophomores in 2016-17, so you’d like to think that they’ll be better next season. Still, if Marquette is going to schedule Patriot League teams, can we at least get games against Holy Cross or Colgate, teams that have shown an ability to be in the 200s or so in KenPom on a regular basis? I’d even be okay with scheduling Bucknell or Lehigh, the usual contenders for the PL title.

Maybe this will just be the back end of the six or so buy games that Marquette will be playing next season. Fingers crossed.....