Marquette men’s basketball will begin 2024-25 season with unusual format, four-team ‘Marquette Challenge’

Marquette will welcome three men’s basketball teams to Milwaukee in early November as part of a round-robin tournament the program is dubbing the Marquette Challenge, and the event includes an MU game at the Al McGuire Center.

Stony Brook, George Mason and Central Michigan will join Marquette in the tournament, with Stony Brook facing Marquette on Nov. 4 to start the 2023-24 season. Central Michigan then faces Marquette on Nov. 11, with both games at Fiserv Forum.

In between comes a game against George Mason on Nov. 8 at the on-campus Al McGuire Center. Tickets to that game will only be available to Marquette students.

The other teams will meet each other in their own venues.

George Mason, located in Fairfax County, Virginia, will host both Stony Brook and Central Michigan. George Mason is perhaps better known to Marquette fans as the school where standout point guard Tyler Kolek began his career before transferring to MU and becoming Big East player of the year.

Central Michigan, located in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, will host Stony Brook to round out the tournament.

The remainder of Marquette’s nonconference schedule will be announced in the coming weeks. The program already has dates set at home against Purdue and Wisconsin, plus road games at Maryland and Iowa State and a neutral-site game against Georgia in the Bahamas (not as part of the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament but at the same venue).

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marquette basketball will be part of four-team round-robin ‘Challenge’