Wednesday News and Notes has Xavier third or fourth

Our season preview is completely done- Player previews, a team by team breakdown of the non-conference slate, predictions for every game before the Big East tips off, and in depth looks into most of the topics that have come up before this season are available here.

Big East Coast Bias has power rankings- Xavier lands third in these. There is a vast swing in what people are forecasting for the Musketeers this year. I've seen as high as second in the Big East to the low of KenPom's barely above .500 for the year prediction. Obviously the seven incoming players skew projections, but this isn't a season that is going to fit easily anywhere.

College Basketball Talk has a Big East Preview- Xavier is predicted to finish fourth here, but Terrence Payne has Matt Stainbrook in the all Big East first team and a couple of Xavier related notes worth reading. The consensus seems to be that Villanova and Georgetown are the top two teams in the league, with St. John's, Xavier, Providence, and possibly Marquette slotting in somewhere after that.

Jay Bilas has released his season preview- This one is behind the paywall at ESPN (which comes free if you have an ESPN the Magazine subscription), but there's a wealth of information on the season in general. Listed in Bilas' announcers he doesn't mute is Bill Raftery, who is awful, so take all of this with a grain of salt. There's some good Big East info in here, but no specific mentions of the Musketeers.

Shorter and not behind the pay wall- Eamon Brennan is always worth a read. This is his article on where college basketball is heading after last season, which was another great one. College basketball has changed a great deal since I started watching 30+ years ago, but it still remains the best of the NCAA sports.