A perfectly acceptable response to losing to #6 on the road and beating #11 at home.
Movement in lots of other places in the Associated Press top 25 poll for men’s basketball doesn’t mean Marquette was going to stay steady after a 1-1 week. A road loss to a team ranked below then-#5 MU, yes, even just one spot below them combined with a win over then-#11 Wisconsin combined to get the AP voters to collectively declare Marquette to be the #6 team in the country this week.
This is the 37th consecutive week that Marquette has been in the AP top 25 after appearing in all 21 polls a year ago. We have not seen a run like this in the Associated Press poll since the 1970s, and hooooooooboy, we’re in for a treat if Shaka Smart gets to this mark. This is the longest AP run since MU appeared in every ranking from December 29, 1969 through December 3, 1979. Nearly 10 full years! 166 consecutive polls! Al McGuire was good at his job.
Marquette picked up 1,274 points this week in the polling. They ended up just 10 points behind #5 Kentucky, so the collective wisdom of the voters nearly left MU at #5. Alabama is #7 this week with 1,126 points, so there’s pretty sizable drop off between the Golden Eagles and the Crimson Tide.
A big AE shoutout goes to Zach Klein from WSB in Atlanta as Marquette’s 1-1 week combined with other results around the country to get Klein to move MU up from last week’s poll. He had Marquette at #4 last week….. and he is the top voter this week with the Golden Eagles as the #2 team in the country behind only Tennessee. There are multiple votes for Marquette at every spot between #3 and #8 in the polls. There’s one ninth place vote for the Golden Eagles, while Jeff Neiburg, Mitchell Northam, and Rick Bozich all have MU at #10. That is, respectively: Up from #12, down from #5, and down from #9, if you’re concerned about that kind of thing.
Iowa State holds on to their title as the top ranked team on Marquette’s schedule this week, and now they’re the only team on the slate that’s ranked higher than MU. The Cyclones are now #3 in the country, somewhat thanks to their win over Marquette, and they even got a first place vote off of it, too.
We have to leave the top 10 to find some other foes, and that starts with Purdue at #11, down three spots from last weeks poll. UConn makes a big bounce back to #18 after beating Baylor and Texas over the past week, while Wisconsin fell nine spots by way of their losses to Michigan and Marquette.
Down in the Receiving Votes area, St. John’s is the top dawg on MU’s schedule, earning 43 points to be the unofficial #36 team in the country right now. They start a run of MU foes, with Maryland (39 points), Dayton (38), and Creighton (32) all in a row. Georgia rounds out the list of familiar names with 21 points this week.
Marquette returns to action this weekend when they hit the road to face Dayton, the unofficial #38 team in the country. Tipoff on that game is set for 6pm Central time, and CBS Sports Network will have the broadcast.
You can check out the entire top 25 here and you can see how everyone voted for Marquette right here.