Marquette is For Real

We said they were no joke, and we should have listened to our instincts on this one.

Let's get to the games.


6. Pitt: they host a decent Marquette team at home. Both teams are deep. Marquette has beaten more top-ranked teams (especially in the past 2 weeks) than Pitt, and they are ranked #24 in the AP poll. This is a hard game to call. But, we pick Pitt only because they are the home team. We concede that we may very well be wrong. Are we actually right because we said we would be wrong? We won't pull a Bill Clinton on you--we were wrong. When in doubt, go for the home team, but this was a hard one to call, and we got it wrong. Marquette back in the Coaches Poll tomorrow?? We'll see.


20. Notre Dame: they get South Florida at home. Again we wonder why South Florida is in the Big East. They are 1-4 in conference this season, and had a 4 game losing streak earlier to bad teams. Notre Dame should win big. Maybe South Florida and NC State could start their own conference. ND wins big as we said.


22. Maryland: play a tough Virginia Tech team away. The Terrapins got whipped by Virginia earlier in the week, so they will be up for this game. Virginia Tech is ranked 25 and is no joke. We think the Hokies (what is a Hokie?) will win. They need to win after a loss to Florida State on Wednesday. A bit of an upset, but we did know, didn't we. The ACC is so unpredictable this year. You have 8 teams that will most likely make the NCAA Tournament, but anyone in this league can beat anyone else in this league on any given night. Oh, except Weak Forest and NC State--they both suck. I think we may have mentioned that before.

Let's look at our predicted rankings for next week. We use the Coaches Poll since we believe it is, for the most part, the most accurate.

1. Florida: stays at #1.

2. UCLA: Bruins retain #2.

3. Wisconsin: Win-consin stays #3.

4. North Carolina: keeps #4 ranking.

5. Ohio State: moves up from #7.

6. Texas A&M: move up from #8.

7. Oregon: strong wins move the Ducks up from #10.

8. Kansas: fall from #5.

9. Pitt: also falls from #6.

10. Alabama: moves down from #9.

11. Butler: continues upward movement from #15.

12. Duke: moves up from #17.

13. Memphis: moves up from #18.

14. Air Force: drops from #12.

15. Nevada: down from #13.

16. Oklahoma State: drops from #14.

17. Clemson: down one point to #16.

18. Arizona: 2 losses bring them down from #12.

19. Marquette: big win over Pitt gets them into the top-25.

20. LSU: for some reason they will drop only a point.

21. Notre Dame: drops from #20.

22. Washington State: down one point from #21.

23. Florida State: gets into the poll by beating Virginia Tech.

24. Southern Cal: good week. Welcome to the top-25.

25. UNLV: maybe? We think so.

One top-25 game tomorrow:

14. Oklahoma State: the Cowboys play Oklahoma at home and get a much-needed boost as they beat the Sooners.

See you tomorrow.