The SB Nation Mothership Has Marquette Ranked In A New Offseason 2018-19 Top 25

Earlier this week, Mike Rutherford, noted smart college basketball guy and head honcho over at Card Chronicle, our Louisville Cardinals themed sister site, fired up a brand new college basketball top 25 ranking heading into the 2018-19 season. It was inspired by the NBA Draft early entry withdrawal deadline passing, and since we have a solid view of who will and will not be on various rosters, it’s always a good idea to update things from the way way too early top 25s right after the NCAA tournament ended.

The headline for our purposes here on this website is that Rutherford has YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles ranked #24 in the country.

No, seriously.

Expect Marquette to be slightly improved without the explosive Andrew Rowsey. Juniors Markus Howard and Sam Hauser have more than enough star power to get the Golden Eagles into the NCAA tournament in what feels like an important season for Steve Wojciechowski.

That’s the blurb for Marquette in the rankings, and it’s pretty much impossible to disagree with a single word of any of that. Sure, it could be a lot more in depth to explain why MU will probably be better than last season, but hey: When you’ve written between 40 and 100 words about 25 teams, you’re already veering past 2,000 words and how long does this thing really need to be, anyway?

We’re going to get an idea of whether or not Marquette deserves that preseason ranking pretty quickly once the 2018-19 season gets started. Game #3 of the season will be against #25 Indiana, while Games #5 & #6 will definitely feature one of #1 Kansas and #8 Tennessee, and could end up featuring both of them.

The schedule doesn’t let up at all, as Game #8 of the season brings #15 Kansas State to the Wisconsin Entertainment & Sports Center, and we get a fun bonus in Game #10, as Wisconsin is sitting in Rutherford’s Next Ten at #34. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that reigning national champions Villanova are sitting in the #9 hole, and of course, MU will play the Wildcats twice in Big East play.

All signs point to Marquette being pretty good this coming season. One way or another, we’ll get a good read on exactly how good they might be by the time the fall semester comes to an end.

What say you? Is #24 in the country too high for Marquette heading into the season? Too low? Just right? Do they need to prove they deserve a ranking before being handed one? Vote in the poll and fire off your thoughts in the comments.

You can check out Rutherford’s full top 25 right here.