I don’t know when precisely that Bart Torvik hit the publish button on the preseason rankings for men’s college basketball in the 2026-27 season, but I do know that Andrei from Paint Touches tipped me off to it late on May 1st. Pretty reasonable day to do it, honestly. About a month after the portal opened up or so is a pretty solid timeframe for a lot of transfers to fall into place and give us a solid idea of what everyone is going to look like next season, right? It’s still a Way Too Early Top 365, but it at least starts to give us a picture of what to think about YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles going into Shaka Smart’s show-me season in Milwaukee.
Let’s drop in a screengrab of the entire Big East juuuuust in case things drift and shift over the next few months. After all, there’s guys who are in the NBA Draft process AND the portal, and if they stay in school, that’s going to shake all of these numbers up.
Yep. Torvik’s preseason rankings have Marquette at #27 in the country. That’s with projections of #33 in offensive efficiency and #22 in defensive efficiency. Just so we are on the same page here: The Torvik computers had the Golden Eagles at #120 in the country in offensive efficiency at the end of the 2025-26 season, and #39 on defense. Overall, MU finished at #75.
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So, yeah, #27 with a top 35 offense and defense would be an improvement on the 12-20 mess that we just watched. I don’t know about you, but I would sign a contract right now guaranteeing that Marquette is the #27 team in the country on Selection Sunday in March 2027. A man with a really nice computer wants to put our basketball team in the NCAA tournament! Gimme a pen, I’m signing, you’re signing, we’re all signing up for that.
Now, with that said, there are parts of the calculation here that I don’t particularly care for. For example: This is with Caedin Hamilton playing 29% of the time. I don’t know if anyone reading this really wants to see him playing 11.6 minutes per game this season. Someone’s going to have to back up Sananda Fru at center though, and with Sheek Pearson evaporating into the portal because Saint Louis suddenly looked attractive to him, it’s either going to be Hamilton or Josh Clark. That is, unless Shaka Smart turns his eye towards the transfer portal and solves that problem…. but it’s been close to two weeks since Pearson left and there doesn’t seem to be movement on the “get a back up big” front.
I also don’t particularly like Michael Phillips landing out in the cold in the 10 Projected Contributors list, especially with freshman Ethan Johnston dropping in front of him. That feels wrong, but we’re talking about 8% of minutes for Johnston, and if you just flip-flop the two of them, you’re probably not that far off from what is likely the 2026-27 rotation.
As for how all of this projects against the Big East, Marquette looks to have the fifth best offense in the league, but the third best defense. If you’re wondering if Connecticut actually shapes up to be as good as the #10 team in the country, I will point out that this is taking into account that Solo Ball will miss the entire 2026-27 season after wrist surgery. If you’re looking at St. John’s and saying “oh, wow, what a drop off,” I’ll point out that there are just eight guys listed on their 10 Projected Contributors. Odds are that merely adjusting their roster further will bump them up from #52 between now and November.
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It’s worth noting that the combination of Nigel James, Royce Parham, and Adrien Stevens propels Marquette along to be the only team in the Big East projected to return more than 50% of their minutes from last season. The Golden Eagles are waaaaaay up there at over 60%, but depending on exactly how Caedin Hamilton fits into the rotation, the actual useage of returning minutes might drastically change. The fact that two freshmen and a sophomore from this past season are going to be carrying a lot of the weight next season does land Marquette last in what Torvik calls Projected Effective Experience, but hey: Would you rather have Nigel James or whoever’s going to play point guard for pretty much anyone in this league other than UConn’s Silas Demary?
What do you think about Marquette projecting as a top 30 team next year? Sound off in the comments!
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