The Golden Eagles will visit the Tigers and play host to the Sooners, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
It seems Ben Steele of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel might have been able to sneak some information out of someone at the Marquette Athletics Back To School Block Party on Wednesday evening on MU’s campus. Steele took to the Twitter Machine to let us know that YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles men’s basketball team will play two closed door scrimmages — you may still think of them as the Secret Scrimmages — before officially starting the 2024-25 season against Stony Brook on November 4th. The Golden Eagles will go out to visit Missouri as well as host Oklahoma.
Marquette’s closed-door scrimmages this year will be at Missouri and home against Oklahoma, according to a source.
Not sure of dates, but both in October. #mubb
— Ben Steele (@BenSteeleMJS) August 29, 2024
This rolls with standard Shaka Smart operating procedure for how he prepares his team. Marquette did play one exhibition game before Smart’s first season as head coach of the Golden Eagles, but they’ve been doubling up on secret scrimmages in each of the past two campaigns. Marquette led Bowie State 48-17 at the half in that one exhibition in Smart’s tenure, so you can see why he sees a little bit more value in tangling with high major Division 1 squads to get his teams ready to go.
As for the two teams in question — and it’s slightly interesting that Marquette will be going up against two teams that are in the SEC this season — let’s see what we’re looking at real quick here. I’m not going to do the full non-conference opponent breakdown here, but we do have access to BartTorvik.com’s preseason rankings.
Missouri is coming off a 2023-24 season where they went winless in SEC play and finished 8-24 overall. That’s a rough look for Year 2 under head coach Dennis Gates, especially when the Tigers won 25 games and made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament in his first season in charge. As for this coming season? Well, in theory, it’s going to be better. The Torvik algorithm projects them at 7-11 in the SEC, which would land them in a three-way tie for 13th place. With that said, they are that down that low in the league, but still #63 in the national rankings.
Oklahoma isn’t much better off. They’re at #56 overall in the country in the Torvik preseason rankings and part of that three-way tie in the SEC at 7-11. That would probably be bad news for Porter Moser in OU’s first year in the SEC after leaving the Big 12. Moser has had a winning record in two of his three years in charge of the Sooners, but they haven’t made it to an NCAA tournament yet……. partially because Moser has yet to post a winning record in conference play. I don’t know what Oklahoma boosters or administration folks are thinking, but I’d imagine they remember Lon Kruger having an NCAA tournament team in eight of his 10 seasons in Norman, and four straight with no tournaments and a poor showing in Year 1 in the SEC is probably not great for Moser’s job security.
Got thoughts about Secret Scrimmages and no exhibition games? Of course you do. Sound off in the comments.