Shouts to Bart Torvik, who has no worries about dropping a look forward looooong before 2025-26 men’s basketball rosters are finalized.
Way Too Early Top 25? That’s for nerds.
Can I interest you in a Slightly Too Early Top 363?
That’s what we’re getting as BartTorvik.com debuts the 2025-26 Preseason Projections. They’re up right now, click the link and go take a look.
I’ll even do you a favor and get you the link that sorts the entire country down to just the Big East so you can see where YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles drop in against their 10 conference rivals. The answer there? Fourth in the Big East, #43 in the country. The algorithm shows the Golden Eagles with the #70 offense on a national level, which would be third worst in the Big East, but at #26 on the defensive side, and that would be third best behind St. John’s and Connecticut.
One teeny tiny hitch there, though. For whatever reason, the T-Rank computers managed to lose Sean Jones, most likely because he didn’t play at all in the 2024-25 season. If you go over to the Marquette RosterCast page, he’s not there. If you use the Add ANYBODY function to get Jones in there, Marquette is now the #41 team in the country. The offense would slide up to #41 in the country — HUGE improvement! — but the defense slips to #46.
There’s also a kind of notable catch to all of this data as well. The transfer portal just closed earlier this week, meaning no one else can enter the portal to be eligible to play immediately next season unless there’s a very late coaching change that opens the portal back up for that team. No one else can enter the portal, but we’re a long way off from all of the guys who are already in the portal finalizing their destinations. Some of them won’t make a decision about what they’re doing for the 2025-26 season until after the NBA Draft Combine in late May. As such, all of these rankings are very much up in the air until many more pieces actually fall into place.
Not much is going to change for Marquette of course, as the Golden Eagles are currently sitting on two projected open roster spots for next season and there’s been no buzz about Shaka Smart adding anyone by way of the transfer portal. The only way that MU moves around in the rankings is in relation to other teams adding pieces — Seton Hall has just 8 projected players right now, for example — and shifting up or down around the Golden Eagles, so don’t be surprised if you swing back to BartTorvik.com in October and find Marquette lower than they are right now.
But it’s important to note that the computers think that Marquette is a fringe NCAA tournament contender right now. Lots of questions to be asked and answered, particularly when it comes to point guard play for the Golden Eagles, but we’ll get around to musing on those issues later on……
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