Seton Hall lost a ton more than we did, returned far less than we did and have a significantly stronger schedule than us. As do the rest of the BE teams that expect to be in the hunt for an NCAA tourney bid in March.
What's more important: beating the bad teams on your schedule or losing to the good teams on your schedule? If SH loses to Louisville, Kentucky and @ Maryland loses either to Nebraska on the road or Rutgers - which game Rutgers has circled on their calendar evidently - that's 4 OOC losses, which if they go .500 in the BE, that make them carry the one charitably (and approximately) 17-16, five of those wins comprising impressive victories over St Louis, Sacred Heart, Grand Canyon State, New Hampshire and Wagner.
Come on now. That's barely a CBI resume, if there even is a CBI anymore.
You're obviously way oversimplifying things. You have way more to lose playing a bad team while the team playing the good team has way more to gain.
Let's say Team A is playing Loyola, Bowling Green, St Francis and Niagara
Team B is playing Kentucky, Louisville, Maryland and Nebraska
Team A goes 3-1 in their games.
Team B goes 2-2 in theirs.
Obviously Team B is better off than Team A. Team B picked up 2 quality wins. All Team A did is pick up one really bad loss.
There's a reason St. Mary's didn't make the NCAA Tournament in 2016 and 2018 despite winning 27 and 28 games before Selection Sunday in those respective seasons. Now, I understand that they don't have the same opportunities that we do during conference play, but they loaded up on cupcakes in Nov + Dec, picked up nothing but easy Ws and then got sent to the NIT.
I don't think the schedule will necessarily keep us out of the NCAA Tournament. But it will definitely hurt our seeding, which again could be the difference between playing Kansas and playing Clemson with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line