Well that was my thinking in another thread where I stated would it be better for us for Texas to beat Marquette and if you view the thread not a lot of BY agreed. Now that they were humiliated by a very good Marquette team they will have to work hard the enter the Q1 level.
Not a lot of people agreed with your thinking because it is just flat out wrong. Yes, our NET rating today would be higher if Texas had won yesterday, but these non-conference games are a huge part of strength of schedule moving forward. We play Marquette 2-3 times vs. just once for Texas. Texas will have one of the most difficult strength of schedules in the country playing in the Big 12 this year, they have plenty of opportunities to rise to a Q1 team. Unfortunately, the Big East is not quite as deep as the Big 12 this year and while we do have UConn, Marquette and Creighton holding their own at the top, we will have a bunch of other 50-100 ranked teams in the middle of our league followed by dreadful DePaul and Georgetown teams. I wish we had beaten Kansas and Marquette had taken care of business against Wisconsin because it would have elevated the perception and strength of schedule of our whole conference.
Just to summarize how this all works:
1) The first 1-2 months of the season basically sets your conference ranking for the entire season
2) The last 3 months of the season is playing only in conference teams. Even if we go undefeated in the Big East which is unlikely, it's not going to make the Big East a higher ranked conference than the Big 12 as those conference rankings are established with non-conference games (see #1 above)
To simplify even further for you: Always root for the Big East when they're playing any non-conference team. Win your marquee non-conference games and then hope UConn dominates in league play. That our ticket to the highest NET ranking and highest seeding.
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