Last year there were 5 teams in AAC worse than 150 in KenPom. This year there are 2. That's 4-5 easy wins turned into tossup games, which are especially more difficult on the road. When you're ranked ~100, you're favored on the road against a ~175 team and an underdog against a fellow ~100 team.
For us, specifically, it's the losses @USF (279 last year, 109 this year) and @Memphis (161 last year, 71 this year) that were much more difficult games because of the depth of the conference. You could even include the @Wichita game, which considering the flux of their roster, they don't have any business being even close to top 100 in KenPom (except Gregg Marshall and their home court are both so good).
KenPom has us favored in the last 3 games, putting us at 7-11 on the year in conference. We're not nearly as upset if we're 9-9 in conference with Jalen missing 10 games. That's the depth of the conference in a nutshell compared to past years (well that and our inability to win close games).
I'm not suggesting it's B1G or B12 or ACC deep, of course. But it's as deep as it's been since the AAC formed as far as # of teams in KenPom top 130. In fact, you can chart the conference's overall improvement by this metric. It's 10 teams this year, 7 the three years before, 6 before that, and 4 in the first year. The conference has gone from pretty top heavy to surprisingly competitive.
