I think what your failing to see is the way our schedule is, its unlike any other top tier team this year. In Kenpom's top 30 teams, only 2 teams have a SOS of 300+: UC and Miami.
Miami is going to get to play duke, fsu, UNC, Louisville, Virginia, ND, NC State, Clemson, FSU, & Virginia Tech as top 50 games in the conference season. Its safe to say they don't have to worry about SOS.
We are in a non power league and we have a glaring SOS problem.
Instead of Alabama St we could have played a team like Old Dominion (#76), Instead of Savannah State we could have played a team like Mercer (#96), Instead of playing Coppin State we could have played a team like NKU (#91).
Those are all top 100 wins where we would win by 20-30 points that teams in our conference played this year. If teams in our conference can afford these buy games, we can too.
if we took off those 3 300+ games, and subbed them with those easily winnable top 100 buy games, were have insurance in case shit goes real bad against X, UCLA & Florida.
But we didn't. We have no insurance. And if we do lose all 3 (not out of the realm of possibility being as we are not home in any of those games) then all we have in the non conference is a really really bad SOS and just 1 top 100 win.
Like I said, I know it was not exactly UC's fault because of our arena. But its still a problem regardless. All the pressure in the world is on these next 3 games.
IMO Florida is the most important game on our schedule. Currently we have just 3 ranked games left on our schedule and I don't see any team in the AAC getting ranked this year. We don't win and its bad news. Be optimist all you want, but that is the reality. I've said this from the start
I understand the problem with lower tier games. I get it. However...last year we had 7 top 50 chances (Column 1 games) and we won 3 of them. SMU x 3, ISU, Butler, RI, X. We had another 4 chances in column 2 with Houston x 2 and UCF x 2. We won 3.
This year in column 1 we COULD have something like this if I am going by current Kenpom rankings and the new changes to team sheets. Rather than column 1 being top 50 it is changing to top 30 home, top 50 neutral, top 75 away. Column 2 is 31-75 home, 51-100 neutral, and 76-135 away rather than just top 100 wins.
Possible column 1...We had 7 last year. This year we could have...
X, FLA, UCLA (3 OOC). WSU x 3, SMU x 2, Hou away, Temp away, UCF away, with potential for another in tourney besides WSU. Let's call it 11 though compared to 7 last year.
Possible Column 2 we had 4 games last year. This year we could have...
Hou home, Temp home, UCF home, Uconn away, Tulsa away...Miss St home. Wyoming neutral. Maybe 1 more in conference tourney. That is 8 games compared to 4 in column 2.
I understand some of these teams are on the bubble of which column they will be in and some of this will change. Wyoming is around 100 in Kenpom and UCF around 75. Let's call it somewhere between 15-20 column 1 and 2 chances compared to 11 last year.
I don't know how much the SOS will change because of our bad OOC teams vs having some better games on the top end. That will affect our RPI a little but we were 12th last year (I think) and got a 6 seed because we lacked column 1 and 2 wins/games. This year our RPI could be a little lower but maybe not get moved as far down because we have more column 1 and 2 games.
