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On Monday, the Associated Press released a brand new top 25 poll for women’s basketball, and for the fourth straight week, Marquette did not receive any votes.
This is not surprising. While Marquette is on a six game winning streak, they haven’t beaten anyone who was receiving votes, so you can’t really fault the voters for not tossing a 25th place vote in the direction of the Golden Eagles.
OR CAN YOU?
See, DePaul is Marquette’s travel partner in the Big East. Marquette & DePaul either host the same two teams every weekend or visit the two teams every weekend. That means that Marquette and DePaul both played St. John’s and Seton Hall in the final two games of the regular season. Marquette and DePaul finished the regular season tied for the Big East regular season title at 15-3. Neither DePaul nor Marquette earned votes last week, and thanks to DePaul’s loss to Georgetown, the Blue Demons are only on a three game winning streak.
And yet, somehow, DePaul got six points in the AP poll.
Two 25th place votes, two 24th place votes.
Nothing for Marquette, the co-regular season champion with DePaul, the team on a winning streak that’s twice as long, the team that beat the same teams that DePaul beat this weekend.
Margins of victory for Marquette over the weekend: 27 and 19, on the road, needing to win to clinch a share of the title.
Margins for DePaul: 13 and 4.
But DePaul earns six points in the poll.
Huh.
There’s still a strong showing of Marquette’s non-conference opponents in the top 25. Notre Dame is still #5, Tennessee jumps up to #12 from #15 last week, and Green Bay pops up one spot from last week to #21. Michigan is still getting top 25 votes, earning 15 points to be unofficially ranked #28th this week.
Marquette is off until Sunday when they play in the Big East tournament quarterfinals. Since the Golden Eagles are the #1 seed, they will be playing the winner of Saturday’s #8/#9 game between Butler and Providence. MU swept the season series against both squads.
You can check out the full top 25 poll right here.