Marquette Vs Murray State In The 2019 NCAA Tournament!

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Selection Sunday 2019.

Would you believe that this is the first NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday since 2013 that you, a noted Marquette Golden Eagles fan, will be 1) waiting to hear Marquette’s name come out of Greg Gumbel’s mouth and 2) not sweating out whether or not you’ll actually hear it? That’s pretty wild, huh? I’m looking forward to it.

Speaking of looking forward to it, I’m looking forward to the Selection Show itself. If you’ll recall, last year, the Selection Show involved an alphabetical recitation of all 68 teams in the field before we got around to seeing the brackets and matchups. CBS Sports has already announced that they have junked that idea and are going with the time honored format of showing the bracket and animating the graphic to flip over and reveal the names as Greg Gumbel says them.

Look, I’m not gonna really knock anyone over at CBS for trying something different. “We’ve always done it this way” is never a right or good reason to continue to do something in a particular way. They tried something new, it didn’t go over well and quite honestly was just a waste of everyone’s time, and thus they’re going back to what they know works. Can’t knock any decision here.

There’s one other slightly important change from last year. The 2018 Selection Show was televised on TBS as part of CBS Sports’ partnership with Turner Sports for the NCAA tournament. This year, the show is back on CBS, so as long as you’re watching the Big Ten title game, you just leave the television there and the Selection Show will eventually start and you’re all set.

Let’s turn our attention to Marquette a little bit before we wrap this up. Here’s what the Golden Eagles’ postseason profile looks like right now. All of this info is coming from the official NCAA team sheets through games played on March 16th.

Record: 24-9
KenPom Ranking: #27
NET Ranking: #28
Strength of Schedule: #36
Quadrant 1 Record: 10-5
Quadrant 2 Record: 6-3

I want to point at that 10-5 record against Quadrant 1 opponents for a moment. Here’s the list, through games on March 16th, of teams with more Q1 wins than Marquette:

• Virginia (12)
• Michigan State (12)
• Kansas (11)
• Duke (11)

That’s it. That’s the list. As of the end of business on Saturday, there were just three teams with the same number of Q1 wins as Marquette: Kentucky, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Seven teams total equal or ahead of Marquette in terms of win total against the best possible competition in the country. Look, I get that as of an update on the morning of March 17th, Bracket Matrix now shows Marquette as the third #5 seed in the field, and I get that if you go purely by NET ranking, then MU would be a #7 seed. But I choose to think that being in the top eight in Quadrant 1 win total is going to mean very good things for Marquette when CBS starts announcing things on Sunday evening.

2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Selection Show

Date: Sunday, March 17, 2019
Time: 5pm Central
Television: CBS
Streaming: March Madness Live