Like most of those college rankings, …

[MU Avenue]

... basketball polls can start to seem pretty arbitrary, baseless and silly sometimes.

This Marquette team was ranked as high as 13th in at least one preseason poll and ascended to eighth in one poll after an early season stretch that included a nice victory over a pretty good team from Duke.

While MU has had a couple of nice wins by uncharacteristically wide margins, most of its victories have been in games where it started characteristically slow, was probably losing at halftime and was led to victory by a single player who found ways to pull the game out of the fire.

On paper, two Top 20 teams played a close game Saturday in Milwaukee, with the higher-ranked team eking out a four-point win. The University of Wisconsin at Madison will hold it rankings or perhaps move up a slot or two; Marquette will slip a few spots or maybe even drop out of the Top 25.

Somehow the credibility given the polls seems really misplaced right about now.

[CTWarrior]

So far we're 1-1 against NCAA tourney quality teams (Duke and Wisconsin) and 1-1 against NIT quality opposition (ND State and Texas Tech).  Valpo was a pretty good win because it was on the road.  But other than that, we've beaten a collection of weak teams at home and have at times had trouble doing it.  When we're firing on all cylinders we can play with almost anybody, but there isn't enough there to be Big East or NCAA contenders.