Big East media day has come and gone generating a plethora of basketball-related content on the interwebs. One trend? There's not much focus on Marquette this season by the media covering the league. In some cases it's as if MU is not even worth the pixels on your screen.
Despite a handful (literally) of consecutive top-5 Big East finishes Marquette remains an outsider without a compelling storyline, which certainly feeds into the underdog culture that drives Buzz Williams' program. Despite a rational case for JFB as the POY, he didn't even make the first team and he's not even considered the league's elite combo forward by some despite better production.
Back to the coverage. As you'd expect, Steve Lavin is the 2010 media darling and the philanderer who recruits misogynists remains unavoidable for comment. Nevertheless, here's a sampler of the Big East coverage today.
We'll start with the red herring - a modest feature on Marquette hoops from the Chicago Tribune. Good morning Oliver Purnell!
Villanova by the Numbers analyzes the variances of the primary pre-season polls for the 2010-2011 Big East season. The predicted finish for MU ranges from 6th to 9th.
Also, in response to a question from twitter, @kevinpvincent asked "On average, how many places does #mubb finish better than predicted in the coaches poll?"
The table shows the year-by-year results. Note that MU has technically never finished lower than 5th in the Big East. Plus, despite our grumbling about the lack of respect, the Three Amigos teams were actually afforded some healthy preseason props. Finally, to answer the direct question, the average is that MU finishes two spots better than predicted in the pre-season coaches poll. Take that with whatever size grain of salt you choose.
Marquette senior Dwight Buycks speaks with Big East TV about the Warriors' upcoming season.
Brendan Prunty from NJ.com provides a capsule on each Big East program, noting that MU is 'the toughest out in the league.'
Pre-season rankings are meaningless in college basketball but they breathe life into the schadenfreude that keeps passions high. One pre-season ranking that homers MU a bit is The Sports Bank, that places MU #33 in the country.
And finally today, the team at MUTVSports is back with the second episode of Marquette Basketball Weekly for the 2010-2011 academic year - see the post from earlier today.
edit: updated with sports bank link
"...they breathe life into the schadenfreude that keeps passions high." -- that was the line I was reaching for as I finished up the post on preseason polls. Great job.
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