Marquette To Begin Home-And-Home Series With Kansas State

Non-conference schedule news for Marquette men’s basketball keeps popping up in drips and drabs here and there. Today’s news bit is that, at least according to FanRag Sports’ Jon Rothstein, Marquette will host Kansas State on December 1, 2018, in the front end of a home-and-home series.

Ben Steele of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a smart and insightful man, confirmed the news, so this means we don’t have to add Kansas State to the list of jokes about Jon Rothstein right next to his report that MU was going to play Utah in 2016-17.

K-State is coming off of a 25-12 season where they reached the Elite Eight by way of squeaking past UMBC in the second round and catching the business end of Loyola-Chicago to stop their run before the Final Four. It was the second straight tournament appearance for head coach Bruce Weber, and fourth in his six years coaching the Wildcats. KSU had no seniors amongst their primary rotation, although do-it-all guard Barry Brown did declare for the NBA Draft without hiring an agent. Brown hasn’t yet declared his intentions one way or another, but even without him, Kansas State projects as a tournament team coming out of the Big 12 again next season.

Marquette/Kansas State is the fifth officially scheduled game of the season for the Golden Eagles, joining the season opener against UMBC, and the two games of the 2018 NIT Tip-Off, and the yearly game against Wisconsin. We also are aware of a scheduled game against Buffalo, but the date on that one is as yet unconfirmed. There’s also two home games as a part of the NIT Tip-Off, but the event has not announced the teams participating in that end of things. That gets things to seven total, and there is likely a road game against a Big Ten team in the Gavitt Tipoff Games coming as well. I would expect nothing but announcements of buy games from here on out, although I wouldn’t be against a road game as part of a home-and-home series against a power conference type team.

From the games that we know to be on the board already, it’s clear that head coach Steve Wojciechowski is very engaged on making a push with this team. He’s clearly going out of his way to make sure that MU has a stacked non-conference slate on the resume. That will benefit the Golden Eagles both as a good warm-up/preparation for Big East play, as well as keep the overall tournament profile shining brightly when the selection committee convenes in March to make their selections. 2018-19 will be Wojo’s deepest and most talented team yet, so it’s good to see him charge into that situation full steam ahead.

Here’s what the Marquette schedule looks like in terms of a calendar so far, with holidays, known off days, and Finals Week blocked out in red and officially scheduled games in green.