1 in 14,000,605

Dr. Strange: "I went forward in time to view alternate futures, to see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."

Peter Quill: "How many did you see?"

Dr. Strange: "Fourteen million six hundred five."

Tony Stark: "How many did we win?"

Dr. Strange: "One."

On today's Scrambled Eggs podcast, host Joe McCann theorized about a possibility of Marquette winning the Big East automatic bid and what it would take for that unlikely outcome to happen. Essentially, if Dr. Strange were forecasting Marquette's future, what possible set of outcomes would end up with a Marquette NCAA Tournament bid? Finding the concept interesting, I took the thought experiment and applied it to the remaining Big East schedule. How could this worst of all possible seasons turn around and end with Marquette in the NCAA Tournament? This, gentle readers, is that one outcome.

First, we need to look at the remaining Big East schedule. Because it doesn't matter for our purposes, we are going to simply assume that UConn will win out, St. John's will only lose to UConn, and the current 3-5 standings will hold as Villanova, Seton Hall, and Creighton beat everyone except UConn and St. John's (those three don't play each other at all). This also assumes every team currently ranked 6-11 in the Big East (Marquette, Georgetown, Xavier, DePaul, Butler, and Providence) will lose every remaining game they play against those top-5 teams. Here is how we need the remaining Big East regular season games for teams 6-11 to play out, with red highlights for losses and green for wins:

This scenario puts Marquette alone in 6th place in the conference, giving us the following current standings:

1. Connecticut

2. St. John's

3. Villanova

4. Seton Hall

5. Creighton

6. Marquette

However, it's obviously a mess when you get to teams 7-11 who are in a five-way tie for last place (or 7th place, if you're an optimist). So how do we sort those teams out? According to the Big East rules, in a multiple team tie with three or more teams, "Teams are viewed as a 'mini-conference' when comparing head-to-head result. The team, or teams with the best winning percentage vs. the other teams in the mini-conference gains the advantage, and the team, or teams, with the worst winning percentage vs. the other teams in the mini-conference are seeded the lowest. Only common opponents will be considered." This means the results of Xavier, DePaul, Georgetown, Butler, and Providence only against each other are compared. Here are those standings:

Go figure, even when they tie for seventh, DePaul still ends up last in the league. Unfortunate for the Blue Demons, but it does provide two more answers for our league standings:

1. Connecticut

2. St. John's

3. Villanova

4. Seton Hall

5. Creighton

6. Marquette

7. Xavier

11. DePaul

Teams 8-10 are yet to be determined. Going back to the league rules, "If three or more (but not all) teams have the same best winning percentage in the original mini-conference, then those tied teams create a new mini-conference and follow this same procedure beginning of Step 1 (Multiple Team Tie)." So now we scale back to a smaller mini-conference with the following standings:

This gives us the following final standings:

1. Connecticut

2. St. John's

3. Villanova

4. Seton Hall

5. Creighton

6. Marquette

7. Xavier

8. Georgetown

9. Butler

10. Providence

11. DePaul

And with that, we have our full Big East conference tournament bracket:

So we've got the bracket we need, what about the results once that bracket comes out? Here's what we need to see:

Wednesday

• Xavier over Providence: Honestly, this one could go either way, but Xavier winning is more poetic.
• Marquette over DePaul: Obviously, Marquette can't win a one in fourteen million shot if they don't win the first game of the tournament.

• Seton Hall over Connecticut: Since UConn returned to the Big East in 2021, Dan Hurley has donated one win every season to his alma mater. The Pirates were within one point in the final minute the first time they played, their NCAA hopes will rely on pulling off the upset at MSG, and Hurley hasn't paid his annual debt yet.
• Marquette over Xavier: From a matchup perspective, I don't think Marquette can beat St. John's, but they already beat Xavier once (and Providence, if they end up in this slot) and could do it again.