Fact of the matter is....we're unfortunately being dealt some bad luck. Nothing we can really do about it. It happens. It happens elsewhere. It's not exclusive to us. Every year there is a deserving team left out because their SOS or RPI isn't ideal. It just might be us. The bad luck stems in the fact that some teams we scheduled, just didn't pan out to be as good as expected. We have a few patsys....but every team does. It's not like we didn't make an effort. Gavitt Game, ACC/Big 10 challenge, Kansas, Creighton, Orlando Tourney is over 50% of our non-con. This isn't a deal where Doc scheduled the entire SWAC as his non-con and that was it. We made an attempt and it didn't work in our favor. Just as in last year, the non-con was probably a bit more difficult than expected.
Minnesota and St. John's tanking hurts. Couldn't expect that. Can't fault our non-con schedule. It was strong enough, especially had we beaten UCF.
To me..the UCF loss is the biggest killer. Kansas is better than we are. Even though we could have won, I can still accept that loss. Penn State is a quality team on the road. Creighton is a quality team on the road. Even St. John's at the time was a quality team on the road. UCF was a neutral site game against a team that we are better than. And the loss cost us a big difference in quality of opponents the next two games as well. That one haunts me more than any of the others.