REPORT: Marquette To Host Central Michigan

About a week back or so, noted college basketball bracketologist guy Rocco Miller put out into the universe that YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles men’s basketball team will be hosting Central Michigan in the 2024-25 season.

Now, I feel comfortable passing along Rocco’s information as solid. The next thing I’m going to pass along is stemming from that and since I don’t know the two Twitter accounts in question, I can’t vouch for the information. However, not one but TWO Twitter accounts noted that 1) Central Michigan will be hosting Stony Brook in 2024-25 and 2) that game is part of a Multi-Team Event that Marquette is (technically) hosting.

We already talked about Marquette’s home game against Stony Brook, so the pieces fit together there. Marquette Deputy Athletic Director Mike Broeker mostly confirmed the hosted MTE in an interview with Cracked Sidewalks’ Alan Bykowski without actually saying it is 100% happening or who was involved, so that fills in that side of the puzzle as well.

“I would say we are going to host our own MTE. We’re going to get three games out of it. Next year’s MTE is really a factor of a desire to play an additional home game or two and the best way to do that. Is it an every year thing? I don’t think we can say that. I’ve said this, historically, your schedule has to do two things. One, it has to reflect your roster and what you’re capable of doing. And then two, it always has to feed your competitive expectation for the program, and obviously, our competitive expectation is pretty clear and Shaka has been open about it.”

Okay, so back to Central Michigan. This game will be the third ever meeting between Marquette and CMU. The Golden Eagles have won both, with both coming as home games for MU. Marquette won 81-67 in December 2008, and then again by a score of 97-73 in 2022. That game was the Students Only game at the Al McGuire Center. Marquette has confirmed that they are doing that event again in 2024-25, but between being a repeat opponent just two years later and coming as part of the MTE, I would presume that the Chippewas will not be the opponent slotted into that game.

Central Michigan is coming off an 18-14 season in Tony Barbee’s third season in Mount Pleasant. The Chips went 12-6 in MAC play and earned the #4 seed in the conference tournament, but had their season cut down in the quarterfinals by way of a 66-56 upset loss to #5 seed Bowling Green.

They finished 2023-24 at #277 in KenPom.com’s rankings, #269 at BartTorvik.com, and #264 in the NET. The Torvik computers show the Chippewas as perhaps being a touch better next season, as they project at #234 in the country, although that’s only 7th best in the MAC. Central Michigan returns Anthony Pritchard, a 6’2” guard who led the Chips in scoring (12.8/game) and assists (4.7/game) last season. He’s not much of an outside shooter after connecting on just 26% of his long range attempts last year, and shooting in general was a struggle for CMU all season. The Torvik RosterCast tells us that Central Michigan doesn’t return much else outside of Pritchard, so Marquette could have a notable tactical advantage if this game gets played in the first week or two of the season.

A date with Central Michigan brings us to seven known games on the Marquette schedule for 2024-25. We know dates for four of them — Maryland, Purdue, Georgia, and Iowa State — while we wait for details on the yearly game against Wisconsin as well as the aforementioned Stony Brook game and this CMU contest. There’s another game for the MTE that lays out there in the wilderness, and I would presume the opponent is on the rough level of Stony Brook and CMU. There’s also the theoretical game against NC State that Andy Katz reported as a possibility, but there’s been no announcement about that or further rumoring.