Pundit Predictions for MU 2016-’17

Photo by Ryan Messier/ Paint Touches

With the start of the season but a finger roll away, most of the national outlets have finalized their team and conference previews. I’m a sucker for sniffing out “narratives” and love to get a gauge into what the rest of the country sees when they look at this Marquette team.

Turns out, most are seeing right past it. There are no top-100 players, or players to watch, or breakout stars, or questions, or spoilers. And don’t get me wrong, I get it. There is no sexy top-15 recruit a la Henry last year and no national star that can drive a conversation. This team probably won’t be contending for a Big East title,  let alone a national title, so there is no good hook. It’s a fairly generic, middle of the pack team in a tough conference that hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2013. From a national perspective, Marquette is a non-story. As it should be.

And again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. This squad projects to have a lot of back-court players sharing a limited amount of minutes on a nightly basis. That’s a recipe for disillusion and poor chemistry. Sometimes, it takes a good ol’ “nobody believes in us” narrative to quell the stormy locker room and get a team to buy in to the project.

Or it could be a lame cliche every team uses and has no real meaning. We don’t know, that’s the beauty this time of the year brings. Once the ball is tipped, each one of these projections will be as worthless as the 2015 or 2014 or 2013 predictions. I just like setting the marker to come back to later in the season.   

Marquette isn’t expected to do much in 2016-’17. Will they? Who knows, but I sure will enjoy spending the next 5 months together finding out. 

Sports Illustrated

2017: 51st (7th in BEast)
2016: 46th (5th in BEast)

CBS Sports

2017: 49th (7th in Beast)
2016: 63rd (6th in BEast)

NBC Sports

2017: (7th in BEast)
2016: (6th in BEast)

KenPom

2017: 47th (7th in BEast)
2016: 53rd (7th in BEast)

FOX Sports

2017: (7th in Beast)

Jeff Sagarin

2017: 68th

Yahoo

2017: (8th in Big East)
2016: (6th in Big East)

SBNation

2017: (6th in BEast)

Athlon

2017: (5th in Big East)

USA Today

2017: (8th in BEast)

Barstool Sports

2017: (5th in BEast)