New Orleans ? When you get right down to it, Marquette is one of those mystery universities like Gonzaga, Hofstra, Bucknell, Holy Cross and, in some cases, Notre Dame.

Everybody has heard of those schools, but few people know where the heck they are.

Many folks, for instance, think Marquette University is in Marquette, Mich., when in fact the Jesuit college has been in Milwaukee longer than the Brewers and Laverne and Shirley, but not beer and cheese.

Marquette University is named after a wanderlusty monk who, while exploring the Great Lakes several centuries ago, made a left turn at Duluth, Minn. If Marquette had turned right, there might be a school today named after him in Winnipeg.

Anyway, many people also mistakenly believe Marquette was founded by Al McGuire, who guided the school to its only NCAA basketball championship in 1977 and later became a TV analyst. The late McGuire became famous for describing a particularly impressive one-on-one move as “French pastry.” Or, when in New Orleans, a beignet.

When you watch tonight’s Kansas University-Marquette game on television, you’ll see lots of “beignet” moves by Dwyane Wade, a 6-foot-5 junior whose skills at basketball far exceed his parents’ compunction to spell his first name conventionally. He is Dwyane … not Dwayne or Dwanye or Duane.

Marquette’s coach is a young guy named Tom Crean. I couldn’t find Crean’s age in the school’s media guide — an oversight, I’m sure — but somebody told me he’s either 36 or 37, which makes him younger than Roy Williams was when he took over the Kansas program in 1988. Williams was 38 in ’88.

Crean, who bears a striking resemblance to actor James Woods, is a hot coaching commodity. Crean no doubt would be regarded as a leading candidate to replace Matt Doherty at North Carolina, but for one failing: Crean has no connection with the Tar Heels and UNC would just as soon go outside its “family” to hire a new coach as it would to change its name to Pine Tree Tech.

But I digress. Marquette adopted the nickname Golden Eagles nine years ago, but there is no mention of the school’s previous nickname in the media guide. Perhaps that’s an oversight or perhaps school officials don’t want it there because they consider the sobriquet Warriors to be politically incorrect.

Marquette University was known as the Warriors back in 1974 when McGuire’s team knocked off Kansas, 64-51, in an NCAA Final Four semifinal in, of all places, Greensboro, N.C.

Incidentally, no one to this day is quite sure why the NCAA selected Greensboro as a Final Four site in ’74, but we do know the Final Four hasn’t been back to Greensboro since and won’t unless that North Carolina city builds a domed stadium, now considered a requisite for the NCAA’s premier event.

We do know Marquette did not come up with the Golden Eagle nickname from the Kansas casino located near Horton and operated by Native Americans, but it’s interesting that both Marquette and Oral Roberts U. opted to change their school nickname to Golden Eagles at about the same time.

ORU, however, didn’t switch for the same reason Marquette did, unless Titans is a Native American tribe I’ve never heard of.

Curiously, it was Oral Roberts that Kansas defeated in 1974 — at ORU’s Mabee Center in Tulsa, Okla. — to qualify for the NCAA Final Four. In other words, KU met the two future Golden Eagles back-to-back that season.

Oral Roberts U. has since faded from the national college basketball scene while Marquette, after a couple of decades of slippage following McGuire’s retirement from coaching, has returned to the national limelight.

As one of two No. 3 seeds to reach this year’s Final Four — Syracuse the other — Marquette is an official underdog.

If Marquette does win the national title, it will be the answer to a trivia question — the first school to win championships with different nicknames.