Jones Tabbed Preseason All-Big East; MU Picked To Finish 4th

But Dan Hurley did the funniest thing possible.

Wednesday morning started off bright and early with the announcement of the preseason polls for Big East men’s basketball in 2024-25. There was some good news for Marquette men’s basketball, as Kam Jones was put on the preseason all-Big East First Team.

I don’t know if the team being picked to finish fourth in the league this season counts as good news, but it did happen. There’s good news attached to it, as UConn head coach Dan Hurley elected to spend his First Place Vote — coaches can’t vote for their own team or their own players — on the Golden Eagles.

Man, have you seen a guy love another team as much as Dan Hurley loves Marquette? He’s always complimentary to Shaka Smart and Milwaukee and so on and so forth, and he went so far as to tell the media that he told Cam Spencer that his World’s Most Obvious Technical Foul last season was wildly inappropriate because it was against Marquette. Other teams, other buildings, fine, but not Fiserv against the Golden Eagles.

Anyway.

Is there anything to take away from how the poll turned out? Xavier’s just barely behind Creighton, Marquette’s closer to St. John’s in fifth than they are to third, Georgetown is still expected to be bad, but somehow Seton Hall will be worse….. and DePaul, even with a coach in Chris Holtmann who knows how to win in this league, is dead last. Didn’t get every last place vote though. That would have meant just 10 points, and the Blue Demons walked away with 12.

In individual honors, Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner was named Preseason Player of the Year. The press release does not mention that anything was a unanimous vote, so I have to presume that Kalkbrenner was not the unanimous choice, and then that led to no one being unanimous on the all-BE First Team since there was a rotation of who was and was not on that ballot……. because the league distinguishes between POY and All-Conference here…. for some reason.

I’m a little bit surprised that Bryce Hopkins and Zach Freemantle made it onto the Preseason All-Big East First and Second team respectively. Hopkins suffered a season ending knee injury on January 3rd, while Freemantle missed all of last season after enduring a third foot surgery in the summer of 2023. Freemantle hasn’t played in a game since January 28, 2023…. but we’re all just presuming he’ll be one of the 11 best players in the league this year? Same with Hopkins, except one of the best six? Seems like a bit of a reach, coaches.

UConn’s Liam McNeeley was named the Preseason Freshman of the Year. There’s no surprise there, he’s the best ranked freshman in the 247 Sports Composite rankings and by a pretty healthy amount, too.

You can check out the Big East’s press release on the team vote here, and you can check out the press release on the individual honors here.