MU holds steady at No. 8
Feb. 2, 2009 2:33 p.m.
The Marquette Golden Eagles fell victim to a numbers game on Monday.
On the heels of victories over Notre Dame and Georgetown, it appeared as though MU would rise higher in the Associated Press' media poll (http://jsonline.stats.com/cbk/polls.asp) than the No. 8 spot it moved into last week.
But for the first time in weeks, there was no great upheaval among the top seven teams.
Only three teams suffered losses: Duke fell from No. 1 to No. 4, Pittsburgh fell from No. 3 to No. 6, and Wake Forest fell from No. 6 to No. 7. Because of that, MU had no room to move upward, and instead will tread water at eighth for another week.
For the fourth consecutive week, there is a new No. 1: fellow Big East member Connecticut (20-1, 9-1), which plays at No. 5 Louisville (17-3, 8-0) at 6 tonight.
MU (19-2, 8-0), meanwhile, returns to action at 8 p.m. Tuesday at DePaul (8-14, 0-9).
The last time MU has been ranked higher than eighth by the AP was on March 6, 1978, when it checked in at No. 3.
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http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/38817972.html
This kind of stinks, but is not a surprise, and actually I think it is probably correct. We shouldn't have jumped Wake with the wins they have (Duke, UNC). You could make an argument for MU being higher than Pitt as we have more quality wins, but their losses are to better teams than ours. Louisville is legitimately ahead of us for now with some of their wins, but we'll have to see what happens tonight. I seriously think, you could make a strong case for MU being ranked higher than UNC. I think they are ranked better than they have played. Though at this point it looks like GT is Duke's best win as well, so yeah. This season has been great and promises to stay very interesting. Can't wait to watch UL - UConn tonight.