As you may have heard by now, NC State’s non-conference strength of schedule ranks poorly. It was never meant to be as poor as it ended up becoming, but the NCAA tournament selection committee doesn’t—and shouldn’t—care about that. It just happened that State got next to no help from the teams it scheduled that it thought would be decent.
The schedule was never intended to be exceptionally rigorous, but State made the effort to set up games against three power-conference programs—one that made the NCAAs last season (Auburn), one that won the NIT (Penn State), and another that appeared on the upswing with a highly-ranked recruiting class incoming (Vanderbilt).