We had better do it, along with penalties for not doing it, if we want to be relevant in the Division I NCAA Basketball world. Here is a link to an article from the Bowling Green, KY newpaper about the subject and how the league's RPI has dropped since the scheduling requirements were dropped:
http://www.bgdailynews.com/articles/2010...ports2.txt
Little Rock has done better than most conference members on the scheduling front, but last year we obviously did a horrible job on the winning front. Here's a link to the Sun Belt Conference's final RPI rankings, along with the Strength of Schedule rankings. As you can see, we stack up ok on the SOS (best in the league at #166, but still only about midway in Division I), but by winning only six games we sucked on the RPI ranking, and therefore we're still guilty of pulling the league's RPI down:
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_sbelt_Men.html
It is obvious why UNT got relegated to a #15 seed, and why the SBC may be stuck in one of the play-in games if the rest of the league doesn't step it up on scheduling, and teams (obviously including us) don't start winning more and better quality non conference games.
The Conference Spring Meetings start this coming weekend. Hopefully the Presidents, Chancellors, and ADs of the league will wake up and smell the coffee. If not, we might as well get used to being relegated to the bottom of the NCAA. I for one am not too interested in spending my money on a program and league that doesn't aspire to be better than #21 out of 32 in the RPI league rankings.