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1) #15 Butler at #20 Creighton (Pomeroy Projection: 78 - 76 CU)

2) #47 Seton Hall at #38 Marquette (Pomeroy Projection: 82 - 77 MU)

Two huge games tonight! The Butler/Creighton winner gets a step closer the regular season crown, but neither team really has much to lose besides BET seeding down the road.

Seton Hall - Marquette could have a large impact on how the conference shapes out overall. It's weird to see the same 2 teams meet twice so early in the season, and this is twice in 3 games! If Seton Hall wins, it starts to create some separation between the top and bottom half of the league as Marquette would join St. John's, DePaul, Providence, and Georgetown on 3+ losses while vaulting the Hall to 3-1 in league. It would also give the Pirates a potentially key tiebreaker over a team it's likely to battle for standings positioning with all season. A Marquette win pulls them even with Pirates at 2-2 in league play with no tiebreaker advantage and keeps the middle of the league pretty much wide open. It's not a must-win for either team by any means, but it's vey possible we could be looking back in March saying this game was huge.

The first meeting was an entertaining yet sloppy nail biter that Seton Hall appeared to have gifted to Marquette...until Marquette gifted it right back in the final 30 seconds. I expect another close game that could go either way in the final minutes. As a Hall fan, I'm hoping the officials mostly just let them play like they did the first time, because the Pirates can't possibly win if they get into a free throw shooting contest with Marquette.

FWIW Team Rankings gives Marquette a 40.9% chance of making the tournament and Seton Hall a 38.9% chance, so virtually the same odds. It will be interesting to see how those odds diverge after this game.

Disclaimer: I like Team Rankings as a reference but I don't view it as the be-all-end-all.

7pm Seton Hall @ Marquette, FS1 - Brian Anderson, Stephen Bardo
Line: Marquette -5.5

9:15pm 12 Butler @ 8 Creighton, FS1 - Vince Welch, Nick Bahe
Line: Creighton -5

Marquette needs to hold serve at home, while Seton Hall needs to steal a road win to help their cause. It should be an exciting night of Big East basketball.

Fieldhouse Flyer wrote:
RPI Forecast – Teams # 1 to # 351 . . . RPI Forecast - Big East Conference

Through games of Saturday January 7, 2017.

Overall - Expected RPI Rank – Team – Projected Regular-season W-L (Projected Conference W-L) - Projected OOC SOS Rank

2 - 4.6 - Villanova - 27-4 (14-4) - # 22
9 - 9.9 - Butler - 23-7 (12-6) - # 15
15 - 15.3 - Xavier - 23-8 (12-6) - # 20
16 - 15.7 - Creighton - 24-6 (12-6) - # 119

51 - 56.8 - Seton Hall - 19-11 (9-9) - # 201
60 - 65.9 - Marquette - 18-12 (9-9) - # 198
88 - 92.4 - Georgetown - 15-16 (6-12) - # 62
90 - 94.7 - Providence - 16-15 (6-12) - # 146

With Projected OOC SOS Rankings of # 200 or so, Seton Hall and Marquette will need to finish better than 9-9 in conference play to make the NCAA Tournament field.

Interesting percentages, imo seton hall, as of now, has a way better chance of making the tournament

jays - 81
DAWGS - 64

I want to take Butlee in this one, but I'm scared the road team we saw at St. John's or IndianaSt shows up,

TheDon wrote:I want to take Butlee in this one, but I'm scared the road team we saw at St. John's or IndianaSt shows up,

I'm not really that concerned with how Butler is gonna play. I think they're just gonna run into a buzz saw tonight.

Personally, I'm hoping that's the Butler team that shows up. Screw the exciting game. Save those for the other games. Give me a wire to wire double digit lead and I'm a happy fan