We’re in that time of the year when notable non-conference games get announced, but the Golden Eagles are pretty much already set in that regard.
I was thinking to myself this afternoon, “Man, other than working my way through the Player Reviews every few days or so and lacrosse stuff, there’s not much Marquette information to write about.” Just to confirm that I wasn’t missing something interesting, I pulled up the archive from last April to see what was going on then.
BIG THING: Marquette had just hired Cara Consuegra to coach the women’s basketball team on April 17th, so the search and then the roster fallout was taking up a notable amount of time. That definitely helps explain why things feel quieter now.
Then I saw that on consecutive days, I published articles about Marquette men’s basketball scheduling a game with Purdue and then the lineup for the Big East/Big 12 Battle. That made me realize: We’re probably not going to get any of that non-conference game news this April and May.
The Purdue game that was announced in April of 2024 was done as the front end of a home-and-home series with the Boilermakers.
The Maryland game that was announced in May of 2024 was done as the front end of a home-and-home series with the Terrapins.
The Dayton game that was announced in July of 2024 was done as the front end of a home-and-home series with the Flyers.
So all three of those games are repeating in the opposite location in the 2025-26 season. There’s always the yearly game with Wisconsin as well, so there’s four games for the non-con schedule. Then, back in February, Marquette and Indiana officially announced their multi-team event for the first week of the 2025-26 season. That event will give the Golden Eagles two games on top of the game against the Hoosiers at the United Center.
That brings us up to seven games in total. We know the Big East/Big 12 Battle is not returning to the schedule this season, or at least that’s what Jon Rothstein reported a year ago. In theory, the Indiana game replaces the Iowa State game or the Georgia game in terms of the level of opponent involved. That does kind of leave space for one more high major opponent if head coach Shaka Smart wants to push next year’s team as hard as he pushed last year’s team……… but at a glance, I could kind of understand why he might opt to just flesh out the schedule with four more buy game-type opponents, too.
THE POINT IS that we’re probably not going to get any big game announcements between now and whenever the full non-conference slate gets released.
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