Pundit Predictions for MU 2017-’18

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.

And it’s a bit of a mixed bag, to be honest. Some of the early models like TRank and ESPN’s BPI pegged Marquette as a top-35 team. The most well established models like KenPom and SI think MU will be good enough to just sneak in to the top 50, while most human rankings don’t have Marquette sniffing the Tournament. 

Most of all, Marquette seems to be a bit of an afterthought for most outlets. Not good enough to get top-25 attention. Not bad enough to get Hoya level Hot Takes. Everyone acknowledges Markus is an elite shooter, but he’s yet to crack a top-50 player ranking list, slotting anywhere between mid-70s to not top-100. 

The general consensus seems to be a fringe bubble team, taking a step back from the NCAA team it turned out to be last year. None of ESPN, CBS, Yahoo or SBNation have Marquette in the field of 68, and all have MU sitting outside the first 8 out. 

Before you fret, though, take a look at last season’s preseason predictions. It actually looks really similar to this season, and every single outlet undershot how well Marquette would play. 

Will that be the case this season? Who knows, but that’s why they play the games:

Sports Illustrated

2018: 45th (8th in BEast)
2017: 51st (7th in BEast)
2016: 46th (5th in BEast)

CBS Sports

2018: 56th (7th in BEast)
2017: 49th (7th in BEast)
2016: 63rd (6th in BEast)

NBC Sports

2018: (6th in BEast)
2017: (7th in BEast)
2016: (6th in BEast)

KenPom

2018: 49th (7th in BEast)
2017: 47th (7th in BEast)
2016: 53rd (7th in BEast)

Jeff Sagarin

2018: 54th (7th in BEast)
2017: 68th

TRank

2018: 25th (4th in BEast)

Team Rankings

2018: 53th (8th in BEast)

John Gasaway

2018: 36th (6th in BEast)

ESPN BPI

2018: 33rd (5th in BEast)

Yale

2018: 31st (5th in BEast)

Yahoo

2018: (7th in BEast)
2017: (8th in BEast)
2016: (6th in Big East)

Athlon

2018: (7th in BEast)
2017: (5th in Big East)

Blue Ribbon, Lindy’s, Street & Smith

2018: (7th in BEast)