Marquette Men’s Basketball Moves Back Into The AP Top 25

It was a safe bet that Marquette men’s basketball was going to improve their polling from last week in the Associated Press top 25 rankings. When you are earning votes and you go 2-0, generally speaking that means that more people should vote for you next week and the people that did vote for you will probably move you up a spot or two.

What has happened is that the Golden Eagles have gained 111 points over last week’s total. That gives them 131 on this fine Monday, and that’s good enough to be ranked #25 in the country this week! It’s a long ways off from Duke at #24 with 221 points, but that’s fine. It’s also a pretty decent chunk away from Baylor, the first team outside the top 25 this week, as they have 93 points this time around.

Geoff Grammer and Todd Golden are Marquette’s biggest supporters in the voting public right now with both of them putting Marquette at #15. MU picked up one vote each at 17, 18, and 19, and then at least two votes at every spot remaining in the top 25. There are still 28 voters who did not have MU in their poll, which is how you get the Golden Eagles just barely sneaking into the ranked teams section this week.

Purdue is no longer the #1 team in the country, but they are the top ranked team on Marquette’s schedule at #3 this week. Connecticut is the top ranked Big East team in the AP poll this week even though they dropped two spots to #6. Xavier has jumped up six spots in the poll to #12 this week, which does go a long way towards making MU’s chances of staying in the top 25 a little bit on the hard side, but more on that later. Wisconsin and Providence are back to back in the poll this week at #18 and #19 as the Badgers drop four spots and the Friars jump into the top 25 this week.

We already mentioned Baylor in the Receiving Votes department, but there’s a couple of MU-related names in there with them. Mississippi State earned 13 points in the polling this week, while Creighton snagged four.

Marquette returns to action on Wednesday when they host #6 Connecticut at Fiserv Forum. Tipoff on that all-ranked team clash is scheduled for 6pm Central time, and CBS Sports Network will have the broadcast. After that, MU will visit #12 Xavier on Sunday for an 11am start time on big fancy broadcast Fox.

You can check out the entire top 25 right here, and you can see how everyone voted right here.