I think it is safe to say at this point that our bubble has popped. While I still look forward to the remaining regular season games, ACCT, and hopefully some post-season tourney, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at something that has sort of bugged

me all season: our ridiculously soft non-conference schedule. Here's the ACC ranked by non-conference Strength of Schedule:

We had the 160th toughest non-conference schedule in the country, good enough for 8th place in the ACC. Maybe most telling though, we played a whopping 7 teams out of conference with an RPI of 200 or worse.

I understand that the ACC schedule is tough, blah blah blah, but the top teams in the conference all seem to challenge themselves more early in the season. Whatever your feelings about the RPI, SOS, and other metrics, the reality is that the NCAA committee uses these metrics to choose tourney teams and seeding. To me, there really is no excuse for the fact that we play the MOST mediocre teams of anyone in the conference.

Here’s the non-conference strength of schedule and 200+ RPI for the Big-6 conference teams that currently find themselves on the bubble:

The only teams that played more than 5 games against 200+ RPI teams are Miss. State and Cincinnati, both of which are likely to miss the tournament.

My conclusion: we should make an attempt to schedule more non-conference games against teams in the 100-200 RPI range.

Some critics will look at this and say that it is difficult to predict what a team’s RPI will be when making the schedule. While predicting exact RPI is nearly impossible, predicting a general range is realistic. Instead of scheduling bottom feeder teams from low-major conferences, what about taking a look at mid-level teams from the A-10, Conference USA, or the CAA? Teams that finish middle of the pack in these conferences rarely finish with RPIs lower than 200.

We should be steadily improving over the next few years, so there is less of a danger of an upset against these slightly better teams. Also, our guys will benefit come ACC time from playing against better competition. And of course, our overall profile looks much better come Selection Sunday.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to improve scheduling?

B.T.W. All data is from CBS sports. And apologies for the formatting issues.