Pretending that a single elimination tournament is a viable way to judge a team/conference's body of work for a year is a bit silly, but, understandable: Nova lost to the eventual champion in 7 seeded UCONN, Xavier and Providence lost when they were supposed to as 11/12 seeds, Creighton as a 3 fell to 6 seeded Baylor. Underperformance? Yes. But certainly not as horrible as some people made it seem. So yes, in a down year, the BE slightly underperformed last year come tourney time. I would hope this year would be different.
Are you suggesting that your comment on the failing strength of the BE is clearly depicted in selecting one year's NCAA tourney performance? Quite a small sample size. Why use last year? Let's use this year instead...which means the BE is the second best conference in the country.