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You can apparently rely on CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein to know exactly what’s going on when it comes to what buy games your team is going to play next season. Case in point: Tuesday morning, when Rothstein reported that YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles will be hosting Mount St. Mary’s in 2017-18.
Marquette will host Mount St. Mary's as part of its 2017-18 non-conference schedule, per a source.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) May 9, 2017
The Mountaineers went 20-16 in 2016-17, including a 14-4 record in NEC play and an NEC tournament title. They scored a 67-66 victory over New Orleans in the First Four before falling to Villanova, 76-56, in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Under the direction of head coach Jamion Christian, Mount St. Mary’s has always finished above .500 in NEC play, even if they have only been over .500 overall twice. That strong NEC record has been good enough to keep them well clear of the sub-300 area of the KenPom chart in Christian’s tenure, so this should be a pretty solid non-con game for Marquette.
Well, maybe.
The Mountaineers have lost five players to transfer since the end of the season. According to NBC Sports’ Rob Dauster, they return just one player who averaged more than 7.7 points per game last season, and that’s 5’5” Junior Robinson, who averaged 14.1/game. Yes, that’s 5 feet, 5 inches.
Christian has shown he can coach, so maybe things will go okay for Mount St. Mary’s next season. This also has the potential to be a sneaky bad non-conference foe for Marquette, and if MU added The Mount to the schedule with that in mind, that’s actually kind of disappointing.
With The Mount on the board, that brings Marquette up to nine known non-conference games for the 2017-18 season. They only played 12 this past season, so there shouldn’t be much more to announce, and I wouldn’t expect anything particularly great, either. For more on the schedule, click here.