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The 2020-21 college basketball season inches closer and closer. On Tuesday afternoon, we got the results of the Associated Press’ preseason top 25 poll for women’s basketball. GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE: Marquette is receiving votes!
Well, maybe votes is overstepping things. As of right now, I don’t have a rundown of each individual ballot. All I can tell you is that Marquette received four points in the poll. That has them as the unofficial #32 team in the country. It’s unclear if that’s one vote in 22nd or four votes in 25th or some combination in between. The Golden Eagles are tucked in between Princeton with five points and South Dakota State with three points.
Marquette is not the only Big East team earning votes in the preseason poll. I don’t know if you guys have heard, but UConn is 1) back in the Big East this season and 2) usually pretty good at this whole shootyhoops thing. The Huskies start off the year as the #3 team in the country. They are the first team in the poll going in descending order to not earn a first place vote as #1 South Carolina picked up 29 of them and #2 Stanford got the stray outlier. The Huskies almost ended up in second, falling just three points behind the Cardinal.
DePaul is also in the preseason top 25. After sitting in the #15 spot in the final poll of last season, the Blue Demons start this year off at #19. There’s more space between #18 Oregon State at 240 points and DePaul with 185 than there is between DePaul and Ohio State at #20 with 165 points.
That is it for Marquette opponents in the poll. Part of that has to do with the fact that Marquette has not announced any non-conference games at all for Megan Duffy’s team this season. As of right now, the team is not scheduled to play a game until December 4th when they host Providence at the McGuire Center to start league play. Will there be something in between November 25th and then? Who can say?? We’re two weeks away and there hasn’t been an announcement yet so I’m leaning towards “probably not” myself.
You can check out the entire top 25 right here.