{"id":297506,"date":"2025-10-12T14:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T14:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/297506\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T14:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T14:44:10","slug":"the-2025-26-kenpom-preseason-projections-are-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/297506\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2025-26 KenPom Preseason Projections Are Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"

And a very Happy KenPom.com<\/a> Release Day to all that celebrate. I woke up on Sunday morning ready to write some recaps of all of the soccer and volleyball from Saturday, but there\u2019s this post from our friend No Escalators advising the world precisely where UConn stands in the brand new freshly released KenPom.com preseason projections.<\/p>\n

So, obviously, this needs to be blogged with regards to where YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles are standing heading into the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n

Shaka Smart\u2019s team starts off the year at #47 in the national rankings, 18 spots down from the #29 that they held at the end of the 2024-25 season. Those things aren\u2019t necessarily connected, I\u2019m just pointing it out. This is Marquette\u2019s worst preseason ranking since 2022-23 (shouts to Ken Pomeroy for updating the Team History pages to show preseason rankings at a glance) when they came in at #76. Marquette won the Big East regular season and tournament titles that year, so sometimes the preseason ranking is just a computer\u2019s best guess.<\/p>\n

The algorithm projects Marquette to have the #69 offense in the country and the #27 defense. It also projects Marquette to play at the #125 tempo in the country, which may conflict with Shaka Smart\u2019s words to the Journal Sentinel about playing fast this season<\/a>. Of course, if MU is a tough defense to solve, as you would expect a top 30 team to be, that can lead to a slower pace because teams are dragging out possessions against you trying to find a shot. The #69 offense would be a notable dropoff from the last three seasons where the Golden Eagles had a top 40 attack each year, but it is right about what Marquette was during Smart\u2019s first year in charge when they finished at #64 and still made the NCAA tournament with the #55 defense.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at the entire Big East, shall we?<\/p>\n

Connecticut \u2014 <\/strong>#5
St. John\u2019s \u2014<\/strong> #16
Creighton \u2014<\/strong> #41
Marquette \u2014<\/strong> #47
Providence \u2014 <\/strong>#48
Villanova \u2014<\/strong> #50
Xavier \u2014<\/strong> #62
Butler \u2014 <\/strong>#72
DePaul \u2014<\/strong> #78
Georgetown \u2014<\/strong> #82
Seton Hall \u2014<\/strong> #93<\/p>\n

If we use \u201cTop 50 in KenPom = NCAA tournament contender\u201d as a guideline, then we start the year with six contenders with Villanova just barely sneaking in right on the cut line. That\u2019s a big difference from last year, when the top six were all in the top 30<\/a>. DePaul and Seton Hall both project to be noticeably better than they were last year when they finished at #122 and #204 respectfully, but then again, they started at #166 and #91, too. This is a computer telling you the most common result of thousands of simulations of the season based on the averages of past results, and sometimes you get a not-quite-so-common result. Seton Hall last year was that, going way outside their projection in a negative way, but 2022-23 Marquette was the same thing in the positive direction.<\/p>\n

My biggest surprise here? Providence as an NCAA tournament contender. I don\u2019t see it, not with Kim English in charge. This is PC\u2019s best preseason projection of any kind since the 2019-20 season, and English finished at #59 and #96 in his first two seasons in Rhode Island. I\u2019m not sure what\u2019s in the math that makes the computer think they\u2019ve got something going on, but that\u2019s why they play the games.<\/p>\n

Marquette doesn\u2019t have any holiday tournaments on the docket this year, so every single game has a projection heading into the season. The algorithm has the Golden Eagles at 18-13 overall and 10-10 in Big East play. That projects Marquette to finish in a tie for fourth place in the conference with Providence and Villanova, one game behind 11-9 Creighton and one game ahead of 9-11 Xavier.<\/p>\n

The thing about 18-13 is that\u2019s the entire 31 game season being projected all at once. It\u2019s the most common outcome of the simulations, so sometimes that\u2019s \u201cwin game #17, lose game #19\u201d and sometimes that\u2019s reversed, but you still end up at 18-13. If we go game by game, we get a different result. That\u2019s 20-11 even with Marquette losing five of their final seven games of the season. That\u2019s an improvement on 18-13, and I\u2019ll take that every time.<\/p>\n

Some of these projections are calling the game as a coin toss result, which is anything between a 45% chance of victory and a 55% chance of victory. Anything in that window is a result by one point in either direction. Marquette has four of those games on the slate this season. The Golden Eagles are projected to lose to Indiana at the United Center (45%) and on the road against Xavier (45%), but projected to win at DePaul (54%) and at Butler (51%). Heads, Marquette wins all four, that\u2019s 22-9, but if they all go tails, that\u2019s back to 18-13. That doesn\u2019t count the five games on the slate that fall between 40%-45% and 55%-60%, which are two point projections in either direction. That\u2019s still within what I would call the margin of error where you could easily understand Marquette winning a game projected to be a two point loss or losing a game projected to be a two point win, but it\u2019s not quite as coin-flippy as the one point games.<\/p>\n

Got questions? Got thoughts? Got complaints? Got jokes? That\u2019s what the comment section is for!<\/p>\n

Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And a very Happy KenPom.com Release Day to all that celebrate. I woke up on Sunday morning ready…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":297507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,38718,38719,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-297506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-marquette-basketball","10":"tag-marquette-mens-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-basketball","13":"tag-ncaabasketball","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115361733991978349","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}