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Xavier not highly rated at Big East media day

Only Naji Marshall makes all-conference, and the coaches have the Muskies in the bottom half of the league.

By Joel D
NCAA Basketball: Xavier at Northern Iowa Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Let’s start with the all-conference teams:

Preseason Big East Player of the Year

Shamorie Ponds, St. John’s

Preseason All-Big East First Team

Kamar Baldwin, Butler
Jessie Govan, Georgetown
Markus Howard, Marquette
Alpha Diallo, Providence
Eric Paschall, Villanova

Preseason All-Big East Second Team

Max Strus, DePaul
Sam Hauser, Marquette
Justin Simon, St. John’s
Myles Powell, Seton Hall
Phil Booth, Villanova

Preseason All-Big East Honorable Mention

Martin Krampelj, Creighton
Naji Marshall, Xavier

I like Naji and I think he’s going to explode this year, but there’s not too much to argue with on the list above him. What I am here for, though, is Quentin Goodin being more productive this year than Phil Booth. Q is going to step into a larger role this season, and he already averaged 9/3/5 on a team where he was the fourth or fifth shooting option on offense. You heard it here first.

On to the projected order of finish in the league:

You can click through if you don’t believe me, or you can just take my word that DePaul is last (obviously). Between Nova and DePaul, it’s not entirely clear what the coaches are seeing here. For instance, unless St. John’s got a new coach, it’s hard to back them to make what would amount to a 6-game swing from last year. Can Marquette defend? Can Providence score and go more than 5 deep? Is Ed Cooley a good coach?

For what it’s worth, here’s what two prominent computer ranking systems spat out for the Big East standings:

Bart Torvik KenPom
Villanova 12-6 Villanova 14-4
Seton Hall 11-7 Marquette 10-8
Xavier 10-8 Butler 10-8
Marquette 10-8 Creighton 10-8
St. John's 10-8 St. John's 9-9
Providence 9-9 Providence 8-10
Butler 9-9 Seton Hall 8-10
Creighton 8-10 Xavier 8-10
Georgetown 7-11 Georgetown 8-10
DePaul (obviously) 5-13 DePaul (obviously) 6-12

So Creighton’s going to finish either 8th or tied for 2nd, Seton Hall is going to be either runner-up or in a blob tied for last among non-DePaul teams... maybe I should take it a little easy on the human voters. This is a league in transition and, aside from the obvious bookends, it’s anyone’s guess as to where a given team might finish. There’s the potential that teams are playing on the last league day to determine a really wide range of Big East Tournament seed scenarios, which is awesome.

Whoever gave that first-place vote to Butler shouldn’t get to participate in the poll next year though.