Ole Miss is 16-9 OOC with a 30th ranked OOC SOS. We are 16-6 OOC with a 215th ranked OOC SOS. They have a 0.353 winning percentage against Q1 opponents, we are 0.391. Against all other teams, they are 0.681 and we are 0.710. Pretty comparable. Against common opponents (Auburn and UGA), they went 3-3 and we went 0-4. And they played all of those games on the road. The last team we whined about RPI was Auburn, and they swept us. RPI was right on the money.
Can we give it a break?
I know you said "give it a break", so forgive me, but this is really interesting to me....
Ole Miss' #30 OOC RPI, guess who they played on non-conference weekends...
Hawaii, High Point, Iowa, and Morehead St.
As we said about another team over the weekend, not exactly a murderer's row. None even close to UGa. None in the conversation for making the NCAA tournament as an at-large. BUT, none even close to our three sub 200 RPI foes.
TL;DR, Schedule building really is a science. It's not about scheduling all the top teams, but rather scheduling teams that are slightly outside the NCAA tournament cutoff point, teams that a NCAA tourney team should still beat, and avoid scheduling any really bad teams.