Remember that non-conference NC State basketball schedule last year that was so bad?
Turns out a message board post The Wolfpacker made Nov. 2, 2018, began with “a word of warning” proved foreshadowing.
In it, the post noted that three different NC State teams were picked to finish last in their respective preseason conference polls: Mount St. Mary’s in the Northeast, USC Upstate in the Big South and Loyola (Md.) in the Patriot League. Four more were selected next to last: Maine in the Northeast, St. Peter’s in the Metro Atlantic Athletic, Maryland-Eastern Shore in the Mid-Eastern Athletic and Western Carolina in the Southern. UNC Asheville was picked eighth out of 11 teams in the Big South.
Making matters worse, those teams that were largely picked to finish last came from four of the seven lowest rated conferences, according to RealTimeRPI.com. It did not help that the one non-Power Five game scheduled against a team that was picked to do well, Mercer (selected to finish fifth in the Southern Conference), labored through a 9-20 season and finished tied for sixth in the 10-team league, two games ahead of a trio of squads that were last, which included the aforementioned Western Carolina.
Mercer had the best final NET ranking of that group: 223. All the rest were 279 or lower, with six of them 318 or worse.
Those schools plus a Vanderbilt team that bombed (final NET of 155) dragged down a schedule that also included a home game against Auburn, a road tilt at Wisconsin and a neutral floor contest with Penn State, which eventually became a quad one win.
Will the schedule be better this year? Using the same standards we applied last year, here’s a rundown of where the teams are picked to finish in their respective conferences, using official predictions for all but the Sun Belt where we used Blue Ribbon Handbook’s projections.
• Memphis (neutral): Second out of 12 teams in the American Athletic
• UNC Greensboro (road): Second out of 10 teams in the Southern
• Auburn (road): Fourth out of 14 teams in the Southeastern
• Wisconsin (home): Sixth out of 14 teams in the Big Ten
• Florida International (home): 10th out of 14 teams in Conference USA
• St. Francis Brooklyn (home): Eighth out of 11 teams in the Northeast
• Appalachian State (home): Ninth out of 12 teams in the Sun Belt
• Detroit (home): Eighth out of 10 teams in the Horizon
• The Citadel (home): Ninth out of 10 teams in the Southern
• Alcorn State (home): Ninth out of 10 teams in the Southwestern Athletic
• Little Rock (home): 12th out of 12 teams in the Sun Belt
Last year, the Sun Belt ranked 17th out of 32 conferences according to RealTimeRPI.com, and its worst team’s ranking in the NET was 259 (Troy). So odds are that Appalachian State and Little Rock will be around where Mercer was a year ago. The teams that tied for eighth place in the Horizon last season (Youngstown State at 262, Detroit was 233 and IUPUI was 197) was in that ballpark range if not slightly better.
Conference USA was 13th in the RPI. The four teams that finished in a tie for ninth in the CUSA last year were 147, 152, 217 and 248 in the final NET. The Southern Conference was top heavy a season ago, but if it holds to form again, UNC Greensboro should be a Tier I game, while The Citadel will be a borderline top-300 opponent.
The Northeast (28th) and SWAC (31st) were two of the lowest rated conferences a year ago. The bottom four teams in the SWAC were all 340 or lower in the final NET, and thus Alcorn State, who was in that group at 348 (out of 353 teams) is likely to be there again if preseason predictions hold true. Last year’s eighth place team in the NEC in the final NET was Central Connecticut State, which finished at 311.
Assuming Memphis, Auburn and Wisconsin live up to expectations, those are likely two quad I games at a minimum and none below quad II. With UNC Greensboro in that mix as another probable quad I game, NC State will have an improvement from its top four games of a year ago because of how Vanderbilt fared.
The other seven non-conference games will tell the tale on how it is ranked in strength of schedule. A year ago, that was one team in the top 250, two in the 250-300 and six over 300.
Preseason picks are fickle, but if they hold true, this year’s schedule shows more games in the 150-300 range and just two or three above 300.
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