I don't think the selection committee ignored that, considering that we equaled Baylor's conference resume and ended up 23 lines below them on the S-curve.
I'm not sure this is any better than last season's nothingburger of a non-conference schedule. As some will recall, our best non-conference win a year ago was a home win against the second place team in the Patriot league. I don't think the selection committee ignored that, considering that we equaled Baylor's conference resume and ended up 23 lines below them on the S-curve.
The Vegas tourney makes it a big step up. Cincy and either Oregon/UNLV beats Providence and Rice.
Not sure about that, because neither neutral Cincy or neutral Oregon beats @Michigan from last year, and you're also forgetting that we don't play the @UNI game, which would have been a nice boost. If we do play UNLV (basically an away game), that'll be great for SOS, but we'll have to beat Cincy first, and we'll be a 4-6 point underdog.
Regardless, an equally big issue is not the marquee (if you can call them that) non-conference games, but the games against the complete nobodies that drag down the SOS from the back end. Because playing, for example, St. Mary's and Harvard would give you a better SOS than playing Kentucky and Towson. And there's a lot of Towson here.
@ Michigan is replaced by BYU at home.
@ Michigan is replaced by BYU at home. Iowa is improved and on the road.
Cincy/ either opponent on neutral court beat Providence/Rice on neutral court.
I'm not sure this is any better than last season's nothingburger of a non-conference schedule. As some will recall, our best non-conference win a year ago was a home win against the second place team in the Patriot league. I don't think the selection committee ignored that, considering that we equaled Baylor's conference resume and ended up 23 lines below them on the S-curve.
Replacing a 4 seed on the road with a bubble team at home is even?
There's no point quibbling about this, though, because my bigger issue is addressed in the second paragraph of my last post, specifically the several games against the absolute worst of the cupcakes, which drag down the SOS from the back and negate the high-level games on the schedule.
It is short sighted to blame the difference in seeding entirely on the non-conf SOS.
Everyone has those games though. And it's tough to determine how good/bad a non conference schedule is when it first comes out. For all we know, BYU could turn into a top 25 team and a very good win for us and Cincinnati could be worse than expected and be a bad loss if we do lose to them.
By this logic, we should just schedule Iowa Central, DMACC, Cedar Rapids South Junior High, and Ames Middle School. Because who knows how good they're going to be?
The point is, instead of playing Southern, Alabama A&M, Campbell, North Carolina A&T, Florida Gulf Coast, Nebraska-Omaha, and UMKC, we could play Lehigh, Mercer, Tulsa, Princeton, Wymoing, Missouri State, and Utah State. Perhaps to casual fans there isn't much of a difference between the two lists, but it makes a big difference to those who look at the numbers that matter in mid-March.
Perhaps that costs an extra $250,000 as a whole to bring in better cupcakes, but that's an important investment for a basketball program, both in terms of better competition and more growth throughout the early season and final seeding in the tournament.