Cliff's Notes on what you mean, please.
Sooo, writers on the twitters started waving around that bubble team NC State had the worst NC SOS in the whole damn country. This was one of those little nuggets you use in sports arguments for why they shouldn't be in.
Then you look at that schedule and you see the No. 16 and 17 teams in the next rankings. Surely there are schedules without multiple opponents of that caliber. But the reason that happened was basically the reverse of how people used to game RPI.
Basically, RPI or any SOS, everything matters, even in a super unbalanced sport like CBB. So if you schedule a bunch of home games vs teams in the 175 (13-17 Ohio) to 250 range (14-17 Eastern Washington) it kinda lifted things up. NC State seems to have done the opposite.
The Wolfpack managed to play eight opponents between 281-352, which will just murder your schedule. They got struck with a few bits of bad luck and one bit of good luck. Beyond the two good games, this is their schedule:
Penn State, a Q1 win, though you probably don't plan for it to be.
Vandy, a team that added two five-star recruits and a good 4-star and was supposed to be good, but managed to go 9-23
UNC Ashville and Mercer, two consistently solid mid to low majors who won 11 and 4 games
Six sort of irredeemable bad programs that are very bad.
I clearly feel that's not the end of the world. Not a good slate, not a killer. But it seemed to really stick for some people. Wanted to know if others had feelings.