What basketball means to Marquette, in two charts

Earlier this week, Paint Touches crossed the 2,000,000 views threshold that had for a while been the sole raison d’etre. Mark Strotman had gone to greener pastures and my personal life had taken me away from Milwaukee and to a new focus, my daughter. I told myself all I needed to do was reach 2,000,000 views for the blog and we could call it a day. 

But fear not, PT isn’t going anywhere. Sure, we post much less often than we used to and don’t break much or any news. Our traffic is down significantly and there’s a competent reporter at the JS doing a fantastic job on the #mubb beat. But despite all that, I believe there is a place in the Marquette basketball ecosystem for the levity, analysis and wit we provide. Plus, where else will you be getting your Twitter recaps?

You see, Marquette means a lot to a lot of people. That’s how you can have a nationally renown blog like Cracked Sidewalks alongside the comprehensive sports coverage at Anonymous Eagle. There are prominent forums like MUScoop.com and Dodds’ Scout page that maintain heavy usage even in the doldrums of summer. So while we here at PT may be redundant in a sense, as long as there is a thirst, we will be there to provide delayed satisfaction.

And boy is there a thirst. Don’t believe me, take a look at the Google Trends chart below.

If you aren’t familiar with Google Trends, it basically tracks how many people are searching for a particular term in a set range of time. For this chart, I just did a generic Marquette search, not limiting it to basketball or the university itself. As you can see, there are very defined peaks at similarly timed intervals. Hmm, I wonder what those could be?

What do you know, every single one of the peaks on this chart comes in March, right when a certain basketball tournament is being played. If there was even the slightest doubt is basketball affected Marquette as a whole, take a look at the flat line since 2013, the last time MU went dancing. Missing the NCAA tournament the last two years has severely dampened national and international interest in Marquette.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying thank you. Marquette’s fan base on the whole is committed, intelligent and involved. On behalf of myself and all of the Paint Touches contributors throughout the last four years, we appreciate your time and dedication. Don’t ever change.