Yep, you can't "manipulate" the metrics in CBB. That's why the metrics are there. This isn't colelge fotoball were you can manipulate the W/L record of your entire conference by playing 8 conference games when everyone else plays 9.You had Houston with a rash of injuries and then the big one in Shead and Roberts wasn't 100%.
Kansas lost McCullar and read recently Dickinson wasn't 100% either the last month of the year.
Lipsey wasn't 100% for a long time.
Baylor- Langston Love was injured.
Those are your top 4 teams and if all were completely healthy there would have been different tournament results. Especially Houston. They were the one team if fully healthy I think could have taken UCONN.
It wasn't metric manipulation. 1) Kansas and Baylor played really good non-cons. 2) Even if you play a bad team at home it isn't going to help your metrics unless you completely dominate them and the teams that completely dominate them are usually good teams.
It is a stupid talking point brought up by people who didn't know what they were talking about.
The entire "metric manipulation" came about because our non-conference was weak, and that got attributed to the entire conference being "manipulated". The thing is, our computer metrics weren't very good after the non conference. We only shot up the rankings after we killed it in Big 12 play. ESPN analysts were either too dumb, or intentionally lying to their audience by suggesting that we "gamed the system" by playing a really bad non-conference schedule.