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"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire
Friday, October 05, 2012
MU prepares for final run at title in old BE in 2013, and possibly an equally competitive new BE in 2014
With Midnight Madness just one week away, Marquette certainly looks like a team that can finish in the top half of the Big East this year.  Based on www.valueaddbasketball.com, Marquette remains the 25th best team heading into the conference.  While six Big East teams rank even higher, they are very bunched together and MU probably has fewer questions than any team in front of them.
2013 Big East StandingsNatl
1Louisville6
2Providence11
3Pittsburgh13
4Notre Dame17
5Syracuse22
6Georgetown24
7Marquette25
8Connecticut38
9Rutgers53
10St. John's59
11South Florida66
12Villanova69
13Seton Hall86
14Cincinnati90
15DePaul119
Conference Average47
Sure, MU has to replace an incredible duo, but with so much talent moving up MU looks like a top 25 team.  Louisville is the prohibitive favorite, but just had a tough injury, and despite the lofty projections for Providence and Pitt based on Value Add, even it's author has to question if either of those teams can really skyrocket that far ahead of where they were last year.  With the questions on those three, Notre Dame, Syracuse and Georgetown all project BARELY ahead of MU - all within 8 spots - so it is certainly much easier to see MU passing any and all of the six teams in front of them than falling behind many teams behind them.  On paper, this is a seven team race for the final Big East title in the conference we have grown to know - with the single absence of West Virginia.
Will Memphis and Houston keep the Big East among the Elite in 2014?
However, I have to admit with the national potential for MU in 2014, I will be keeping one eye on Memphis, Houston, Central Florida, Temple and SMU.  No greater a number-cruncher than Luke Winn has calculated that the Big East after this year could drop to the 6th best basketball conference, but I was surprised when running the numbers to see that the Value Add projections for next year - even assuming all planned moves happen in time for the 2014 season - actually shows the conference staying just as strong in 2014 as in 2013 based on the average national rankings of all members in Value Add projections.
I ran the longer post below on the ranking of the top 150 teams in the country, and have just updated it based the new signings for Kentucky, South Florida and others this week.  When you look at the Rnk2 number - the most realistic expectation of what the 2014 roster will look like (your projected NBA players go to the draft, but you get the calculated average of the recruits to fill your remaining spots), the Big East actually stays exactly the same with an average national ranking of 47th.
Of course projections are not precise like measuring past performance, an