Marquette Continues To Hover Outside The AP Top 25

Here’s what I wrote as an intro to last week’s Associated Press men’s basketball top 25 poll update:

The last two weeks, Marquette men’s basketball earned more points in the Associated Press top 25 polling, but dropped backwards a spot away from the top 25 each week. Because nothing makes sense and everything you know is wrong, this week the Golden Eagles have one point fewer than they did last week, but are now one spot closer to the top 25 than they were last week.

Wellllllll, this week continues the goofy as all hell trend. Last week Marquette had 27 points and were the unofficial #33 team in the country. In the brand new AP poll that came out on Monday, Marquette has 25 points — down two — and is unofficially ranked #29 — up four — in the country. You make sense of it. I suppose the thing that makes the most sense is that the AP top 25 is starting to solidify and so points are getting harder to come by AND there are fewer teams getting votes than before.

Marquette finds themselves quite a distance back from the actual rankings, as Colorado have 81 points in the #25 spot. Arkansas have 38 points to end up one spot in front of Marquette, while Xavier is one spot behind with 18 points.

Butler is now the best ranked team on Marquette’s schedule, bouncing up five spots from last week to earn the #6 ranking in the new poll. Maryland has moved up three spots to #12, while Villanova dropped six spot after losing to Marquette on Saturday, ending up at #16 this week.

As has been the case regularly so far this season, there are a lot of Marquette opponents in the Receiving Votes department with the Golden Eagles. There’s Seton Hall with 48 points, the aforementioned Musketeers at 18 points who are followed quickly by Wisconsin Badgers with 17 points. Creighton, even with a win over Marquette midweek, only gathered up six points this week, and Purdue gathered just one 25th place vote after getting shelled by Illinois on Sunday evening.

Marquette returns to action on Tuesday evening when they host Providence at Fiserv Forum. Tip-off is set for 6pm Central on FS1.

You can check out the entire top 25 right here.