Marquette Men’s Basketball To Play In 2019 Advocare Invitational

One of the things that noted CBS Sports television dude Jon Rothstein loves to do is report on who is going to be playing in various multi-team events. He fiiiiiinally got around to bringing up YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles on Tuesday, and it appears that MU will be going to Walt Disney World for Thanksgiving in 2019.

According to Rothstein, Marquette will be one of the eight teams involved in the 2019 Advocare Invitational. That’s the yearly tournament held at Disney World’s Wide World of Sports gym in Florida. The Golden Eagles will reportedly be joined by Davidson, Fairfield, Harvard, Maryland, Temple, USC, and Texas A&M.

Not to particularly bag on anyone here, but from looking at that list, I feel that the projected 2019-20 Marquette roster should be favored to win that tournament. In theory, with just Matt Heldt and Joseph Chartouny departing, the Golden Eagles should be getting the same kind of preseason attention next year that they’re getting this year, and that should make MU the quite honestly heavy favorite.

Out of the other seven entrants in the field, Marquette has never played two of them: Maryland and Fairfield. The longest gap between games goes to Texas A&M (1-1), as MU hasn’t played the Aggies since 1985. Temple (0-2) hasn’t been on the schedule since 1995, while the other three have all played Marquette this decade. We all remember Harvard (1-0) coming to the McGuire Center for the NIT last year, and I don’t think we’ll be forgetting the game against Davidson (2-1) in the 2013 NCAA tournament any time soon. For a brief moment, I thought Marquette’s lone game in history against USC (1-0) was in this event, but I got the maroon and gold uniforms of the Trojans confused with Florida State. Marquette and USC met in the 2012 Maui Invitational.

Marquette has played in this event twice before. The first time was back in 2009 (oh my goodness how long ago?) when it was the Old Spice Classic, and MU ended up losing in the championship game to the aforementioned Florida State team. That trip ended up creating the now-famous video of Jimmy Butler rocking out to Party in the USA. The second time was in 2014, in Steve Wojciechowski’s first season as head coach. MU went 2-1 with the loss coming against #20 Michigan State in the semifinals and Wojo broke a whiteboard with his hand. Good times!

The three games from this event joins road trips to visit Kansas State and Wisconsin on the 2019-20 Marquette non-conference schedule. MU will have used up three of their six appearances in the Gavitt Tipoff Games after this season, so with three more left to go and four years left in the series, I would imagine that the Golden Eagles will get a Big Ten team again to add to that already pretty solid non-conference schedule.

In closing, I would like to send a note to the Battle 4 Atlantis management team. The note goes as such: SCHEDULE MARQUETTE, YOU COWARDS.