The 2025-26 BartTorvik.com Preseason Women’s Basketball Rankings Are Here! A Sneak Peek at Marquette's Season
Hey there, basketball fans! Are you ready to dive into the exciting world of women's basketball rankings? Well, get ready because the 2025-26 BartTorvik.com Preseason rankings are here, and we're taking a closer look at Marquette's prospects for the upcoming season. But here's the twist: these rankings were a bit late to the party. If I'm running behind on this, I apologize, but these rankings were definitely not up when I wrote the rundown of Marquette's starters for the 2025-26 season (https://www.anonymouseagle.com/marquette-womens-basketball/32182/season-preview-starters-volker-vice-forbes-porter-mason), which published on Wednesday morning. They are here now on Thursday afternoon, so let’s talk about what we’ve got, shall we?
Cara Consuegra’s team starts off her second season in charge at #52 in the Torvik rankings. They finished 2024-25 at #54 after starting the year off at #102, so I’m counting this a win for the Golden Eagles. The component parts of Marquette’s ranking are #71 on offense and #38 on defense. That’s not a surprise, as I think everyone can agree that Consuegra’s first season was very clearly dependent on Marquette defending as hard as humanly possible in order to make up for several shortcomings on the offensive end of the floor. MU finished last season at #100 on offense and #30 on defense, so at the very least, the Torvik algorithms like MU to get a decent chunk better on offense. That makes sense, as MU had to figure out how all their pieces fit together in the early parts of last season, and the addition of Jordan Meulemans’ three-point shooting should provide the team a bit of a shot in the arm.
Now, let’s see how Marquette fits into the Big East.
Connecticut — #3
Villanova — #41
Marquette — #52
St. John’s — #59
Georgetown — #63
Seton Hall — #66
Creighton — #85
Butler — #111
DePaul — #123
Providence — #170
Xavier — #200
This ranking approximates my thoughts on the Big East this season when I picked my order of finish (https://www.anonymouseagle.com/marquette-womens-basketball/31370/big-east-wbb-preseason-awards-predictions-strong-zediker-uconn-creighton). UConn is at the top, Xavier is at the bottom, and there’s a clear chunk of teams that could make the NCAA tournament if things work out for them, but they’re all largely interchangeable if you’re making a list.
If we click through to Marquette’s page, we can see that the computer projects Marquette to go 19-9 this season with a 13-7 record in the Big East. That is missing one game, as the computer can’t project a winner of their second game in the Coconut Hoops event in Fort Myers until we know if MU is playing Indiana or Gonzaga. I can tell you that with Indiana at #56 and Gonzaga at #88, the Golden Eagles would be favored on a neutral court against both teams, so that’s good news.
Also in the good news department is the fact that Marquette is favored in 21 of their games that are listed. That means going game by game, the Golden Eagles project at going 21-7, or 22-7 if you figure in that Indiana/Gonzaga game. That brings with it a mark of 15-5 in the Big East, and I will sign up for that right now, that’s for sure.
Of course, that’s just counting off “is Marquette favored to win?” Along with that you get things like their away game against Seton Hall that is listed at 50% but is very clearly somewhere between 50.01% and 50.44% for Marquette as the Golden Eagles are projected to win, 67-66. Anything in between 45% and 55% is going to be projected as a one-point coin flip, and MU has four games, all in Big East play, that fall into that category and there’s two wins and two losses. If everything comes up sunshine for the Golden Eagles, that means that they could tilt that record to 17-3, but it’s just as possible that it falls to 13-7. That’s the original projection, aka the most likely outcome out of thousands of simulations of the season, so that’s not the worst possible result there.
So, what do you think? Got questions? Got thoughts? Got complaints? Got jokes? That’s what the comment section is for!
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