June 8, 2009

MILWAUKEE - The BIG EAST Conference announced Monday the home and away league schedule of opponents for the 2009-10 women's basketball season. Highlighting Marquette's conference home schedule is a date with the 2009 NCAA Champion Connecticut as well as meetings with four other teams who made post-season runs in 2009.

Along with UConn, the Golden Eagles will welcome NCAA Tournament participants DePaul and Pittsburgh, Women's National Invitation Tournament Champion USF and WNIT participant Georgetown. Cincinnati, Providence and Seton Hall will also make stops at the Al McGuire Center in 2009-10.

For the fifth consecutive year, the format of league play is a 16-game schedule. Each team will play 16 conference games- seven opponents home only, seven opponents away only and one opponent both home and away, a repeat opponent. Each member will have a total of eight home games and eight away games. The conference opted to change the repeat opponents from the 2008-09 season for eight teams for the upcoming year, thus Marquette will face DePaul on both of its respective home courts.



The Golden Eagles will face seven teams on the road: national runner-up Louisville, Rutgers, St. John's, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Villanova and West Virginia. 


The BIG EAST landed seven teams in the 2009 NCAA Championship, highlighted by Connecticut and Louisville playing in the title game, and six in the WNIT. USF captured the WNIT Championship to help the BIG EAST become the only conference to win both in the same season.

In an early preseason power ranking by SI.com, two BIG EAST teams are ranked in the top 10, including UConn at No. 1 and Rutgers at No. 6. In ESPN's 64 teams to watch in 2009-10, it named Connecticut (No. 1), Notre Dame (No. 5), Rutgers (No. 8), DePaul (No. 17), Pittsburgh (No. 26), Louisville (No. 32) and Georgetown (No. 40) to its watch list.

The complete 2009-10 women's basketball schedule will be released at a later date.