Understanding why N.C. State is still a long way from the NCAA tournament despite four wins over likely tournament teams requires an understanding of how the selection committee is assessing potential teams differently this year -- and how that hurts N.C. State, which under the new standards has played (and won) a lot of games that don’t matter.
While the NCAA committee is still using the much-maligned-and-for-good-reason RPI as its base measure of teams, it’s no longer grouping wins and losses by raw opponent RPI (top-50, top-100, top-200, 200+) but instead into buckets of different RPI standards based on where the game was played in an attempt to place a more accurate value on road and neutral-site wins.