DeCourcy slams Marquette; media updates

The Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy is at it again.

In case you missed it yesterday DeCourcy called out Marquette as a burden on the Big East while the conference looks to re-invent itself as a stronger BCS member. In the article DeCourcy argues that the Big East made a mistake by adding Marquette and DePaul in 2005 because their membership complicates the league's current expansion pursuits. Further he presumes that the conference's legacy members "must be regretting" the 2005 expansion.

Really? I disagree and wonder why Marquette is the Big East's burden rather than Providence, Seton Hall or DePaul (which he also calls out in the article to a lesser degree). Marquette's unquestioned commitment to the hoops program and competitive athletics across the board is the standard by which these other universities are compared. DeCourcy is assigning a perverse value to conference longevity. That should never be the a driver for evaluating a program's relative contribution and value to its league. Further, it remains unclear whether basketball-only schools, legacy or not, negatively impact the conference's current effort to double-down on football.

DeCourcy defended himself this morning on The Doug and Mike Show on 1250 WSSP-Milwaukee. Check it out here. Nice job by Doug Russell to land this interesting interview.

The MUScoop community is all over this one. What kind of backhanded snipes will DeCourcy make in two years when we win the Big East Championship? Yeah, we went there!

And now for additional updates on Marquette hoops from around the Interwebs:

• Bob Wolfley churns out a memorable piece on Maurice Lucas in the Journal-Sentinel, detailing Luke's decision to forgo his senior season at Marquette for the ABA.
• Jeff Goodman previews the Big East and picks MU as the league's 5th best team. Vander Blue is his rookie of the year.
• Kyle Franko from Pressbox previews MU's season including a best and worst-case scenario.
  
• The Marquette Tribune evaluates the 2010-2011 Warriors in their annual basketball preview. The main landing page is here -- look for links to the various articles below.
• Marquette is recruiting a German big man who is prepping in Delafield, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has excellent German cuisine, big fella. Here's a bit more on Martin Breunig.
• MU graduate Dominic James was named the player of the week in the Bulgarian league.
• MU graduate David Cubillan led his team to the pro title in Venezuela, scoring 17 in the deciding game.
• Can you speak Italian? If so, here's Travis Diener.