Is Marquette's Season Over?

Photo by Mark Hoffman | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Typically, we don't talk about the NCAA Tournament bubble until conference season is underway. I don't start bracketology articles until around Christmas. It's too early and there isn't enough data to say anything with even marginal confidence. Except sometimes, it doesn't feel like it's too early...

Is There an At-Large Path?

Marquette's early losses to Indiana, Maryland, and Dayton leave Marquette at 3-3. This matches the worst program start since the 1989-90 season, and only matched by 2014-15. For a program pushing the power of retention, losses to teams like Indiana and Maryland that are made up completely of new players -- tied for 0.0% minutes continuity per kenpom while Marquette's 53.5% is 13th nationally and #2 among high-majors -- has to feel like a blow to the heavily marketed Relationships/Growth/Victory model. The loss to Dayton was the first time Marquette lost at home to a non-Power conference school since dropping the opener to Belmont in 2015 and killed a chance at revenge for the Flyers' upset win over then-#6 (per the AP Poll) Marquette from a year ago. Suffice to say, any March glory has to feel like an uphill climb to Marquette fans.

Let's try to sprinkle some optimism in. Making the NCAA Tournament wouldn't be wholly unprecedented. Marquette did start 3-3 start under Hank Raymonds in 1979-80 and made the NCAA Tournament. Last year, Arizona started 3-3 (and sank to 4-5) before rallying in conference play to not just make the Tournament but earned a protected 4-seed. And of course, there is the Big East Tournament automatic bid, which Marquette won three years ago and a Georgetown team that also started 3-3 won five years ago.

Photo by Frank Franklin II | Associated Press

Today we'll look at what it will take for Marquette to reach the NCAA Tournament. For the pessimists in the crowd, this may confirm your priors. For the optimists, we will lay out the path to making the Big Dance so you know what to hope for. It might not be as impossible as it seems.

Wins Above Bubble Primer

The first thing we'll focus on is Wins Above Bubble. This was a new metric to the NCAA Team Sheet last year but it was also the single most predictive metric of inclusion and seed. In theory, for the metric to work perfectly, any positive score would be a team that makes the NCAA Tournament and any negative score would miss. The way it works is every game is assigned a value between 0.01 and 1.00. For instance, Marquette's recent game against Dayton was assigned a positive value of 0.28, so if Marquette had won, they would've gained 0.28 in WAB. Losing earned them a negative net of the opposite, so -0.72 (the difference between 0.28 and 1.00). I'm using T-Rank because it's the easiest to track, but the NCAA's official WAB mirrors the formula using NET instead of T-Rank as the additive basis. Currently, Marquette's WAB score is -1.49.

Before we dig into WAB fully, it's important to caveat that the numbers fluctuate throughout the year. For instance, the value for beating Wisconsin on the morning of Friday, November 21 was 0.67. After losing to BYU, their value changed to 0.64, meaning they provide less value if you beat them and do more damage if you lose to them. Unfortunately, this is a trend that pervades Marquette's schedule. T-Rank includes preseason expectations that influence the rankings so that a few early season outliers don't radically change a team's rank. In terms of how this influences WAB, it can be significant for teams near the top of the rankings, but becomes negligible as you move further down the rankings. For instance, the difference between the home value for Marquette beating #42 Villanova (+0.44) and #97 Xavier (0.24) is a sizeable +0.20 in WAB. The home value difference between #254 Valparaiso (+0.06) and #310 Central Michigan (+0.04) is negligible despite a nearly identical gap in rankings.

For the purposes of this article, data was pulled the afternoon of November 21st after the BYU/Wisconsin game.

WAB Non-Conference Status

Marquette hasn't done themselves any favors with their start. In the past two years, no team has earned an at-large bid with a WAB score as low as Marquette's current -1.49. It's worth noting that once game values are established, the record will be all that matters in terms of projecting the WAB score because each game is worth an equal fluctuation of 1.00. Here are the remaining values on Marquette's non-conference schedule, along with the current expected non-conference WAB scores based on the potential remaining wins and loss scenarios:

Last year, the worst non-conference WAB scores to earn at-large berths were 4-seed Arizona (-1.21), 9-seed Creighton (-0.57), 6-seed BYU (-0.40), and play-in 11-seed Xavier (-0.39). While the WAB metric has only been on the team sheet for one season, going back to 2021 there were only two teams to earn at-large bids with a non-con WAB score worse than 2025 Arizona. Those were 2023 Texas A&M (-2.29) and 2022 Rutgers (-2.33). Buzz's TAMU squad went 15-3 in the SEC, finishing second in the league. The Scarlet Knights were a controversial Last Four In selection but had seven Q1 wins to bolster their bizarre case. Using these precedents, we feel comfortable making the following statements regarding Marquette's remaining non-conference schedule:

1. If Marquette can't beat at least one of Oklahoma, Wisconsin, or Purdue, earning an at-large bid would be unprecedented.
2. If Marquette can get two wins against Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Purdue, they'll at least be back in the "you're saying there's a chance" camp.
3. If Marquette wins all of their remaining non-conference games, they will likely be on track to earn an at-large bid.

We went through the conference season to determine the WAB value for every conference game. Using current numbers, a perfect 20-0 season would be worth +9.17 in WAB. Every loss drops that by because you not only lose the positive win share but also are saddled with the negative loss share.

This results in the following potential league-only based on the above:

At an initial glance, this gives a somewhat rosy outlook. If these numbers maintain through the year, Marquette getting to 7-4 in non-con and 12-8 in league would seem to at least put them in the mix for an at-large bid. It would seem that the same 7-4 with a 13-7 record would make them near locks for a bid. The problem with that is the aforementioned "if these numbers maintain" because based on current results, that doesn't look likely.

Early Trends & WAB Futures

Early in the season, metrics like T-Rank use roster construction, program history, and recruiting rankings to approximate how good teams are expected to be. However it also let you sort that preseason data out and only look at a team's performance using in-season data. This early in the season, that data can be deceptive. What it does tell you is how teams have actually played compared to the expectation of how they should have played. Look at the disparity of the teams on Marquette's schedule so far:

For the sub-150 teams, these changes don't mean much. Southern, Central Michigan, Valparaiso, and Little Rock have all had pretty large swings, but the current WAB point difference between the best guarantee game of #151 Southern (+0.12) and the worst in #324 Albany (+0.04) is less than 0.1 overall, so all of those are pretty negligible moves. The negative swings for Maryland and Oklahoma, on the other hand, are significant.

The bigger issue here though is for the Big East. Once league play starts, the WAB benefits are pretty much set in stone because even though an individual team might improve their value with a few impressive wins, their in-league opponents will have similar value losses so that it balances out in the end. These numbers are even more fixed in a league with a double-round robin schedule. More than half the Big East has seen a rank decline. Further, while the most improved metric team is Butler (+31) there are four teams that individually have bigger negative offsets than the positive done by the Bulldogs.

As this data calcifies, the expectation is that Big East WAB values will go down as the in-season results get closer to the sorted data. This is particularly salient in Big East play because non-conference play is about halfway done. That means that the league data is close to being fixed. There's still some time for the Big East to turn things around, but if this is what the league is it will likely be the weakest since 2019 when the league got just three bids and none better than a 5-seed. Cheer for every Big East team because the next two weeks will go a long way to determining if the league earns 3 bids or 5.

To address this, I calculated the values of the teams in the commensurate rankings with the sorted data for Big East teams. So instead of Georgetown's score at #70 I used the WAB value for #61 Santa Clara. For Creighton, instead of using their current #31, I used UNLV at #90. The max 20-0 value changed from +9.17 to +8.23. The effective change means that Big East wins will be worth as little as 89.8% of the current expected value while Big East losses will penalize by as much as 108.7% of the current expected value. These may not be fixed values, but they give us an idea of what will be needed to earn an at-large bid.

Historically, in the past five years no team has been left out with a 2.0 or better WAB. Using these charts, that means any combination of 22+ wins before the Big East Tournament should result in an at-large bid for Marquette. Over the same span, 79.1% of teams to finish between 1.0-1.9 WAB have earned a bid, though at least one was left out each season. This means that if Marquette finishes at 21-10, like Xavier did last year (albeit with a +0.42 WAB) they will be on the bubble but with a good chance of being in. Teams finishing between 0.0-0.9 WAB earned an at-large bid 36.5% of the time. So if Marquette finishes at 20-11, they will most likely be on the outside looking in. Given the increased importance of WAB, it seems very unlikely anyone finishing with a negative WAB will earn an at-large bid.

So is Marquette's Season Over?

In short, no. If this team can rally and pull wins out of two of their remaining three big non-con games, then follow that up with a 15-5 Big East season, no matter how unlikely that combination may be, they will likely find themselves in the NCAA Tournament no matter what happens at MSG in March. If they come up short by a game in one of those regards, there's still a chance. Given the damage already done and the likelihood that the Maryland and Dayton losses will look worse in March than they do now, I tend to think 21-10 in regular season play is the floor, unless the entire bubble implodes.

While that seems to be the annual fan expectation, with the ACC, Big 10, and Big 12 all trending toward more bids than last year, there's a good chance this will be a firmer bubble than in recent seasons, meaning that Marquette might need that gaudier 22-9 record and big wins to bolster it if they want to an at-large bid. And of course, if all else fails, Patrick Ewing proved that the Big East Tournament offers hope to even the most hapless. Let's cross our fingers and hope we don't need it.